Victorian Hair Jewelry: Braided on a Table, or Laid Flat

Bobbins hang in a fringe around a small round table, each one tied to a strand of hair. That is the braiding table in Mark Campbell's Self-Instructor in the Art of Hair Work (1867), whose patterns turn hair into chains, rings and bracelets [1]. The braider lifted the strands across the table in a set order, around a mold at the center, while a weight below drew the braid down through a hole [1]. Not all hairwork needed a table: Alexanna Speight's The Lock of Hair (1871) lays hair flat on a palette and sets it on a tablet for a brooch or locket [2].

The brooch above holds hair laid flat under glass. The Rijksmuseum dates it to about 1843 and records braided hair under a rectangular piece of glass; its title names the hair as that of the poet Petronella Moens [3]. Neither manual describes a surviving piece. So each object here is described from its own museum record or, for one bracelet, its Commons file page.

How was hair braided on a table?

Campbell's table was a round cover on a stand, turning on a cap "for the convenience of the braider" [1]. Each strand, a counted bundle of hairs, was tied to a bobbin and laid across the cover over marked numbers [1]. A mold of wire or wood was tied at the center, and under the table a weight fastened to the strands' joined ends drew the braid down through a central hole as it grew [1]. Too heavy a weight makes the braid loose and too light a weight leaves it rough, Campbell warns [1].

One round of a square chain braid

The first pattern in the manual, the square chain braid, takes 16 strands of 80 hairs, four at each of four stations, A to D [1]. His text gives one round:

1. At A, the two strands numbered 1 are lifted across the table, one on each side of the mold, and laid between the 1s at B.
2. The two 2s at B come back the same way and are laid between the 2s at A.
3. C and D trade strands in the same way.
4. Each strand then takes the number marked under it, so A has two 1s again [1]. The braider repeats from A until the braid is long enough.

Wider than a phone screen: swipe sideways along the diagram, or open it full size.

From the mold to a bracelet

In Campbell's directions, a finished braid comes off the weights, is boiled on its mold, dried in a hot oven and slipped onto a cord, elastic if wanted [1]. Anything to be worn as jewelry should then be mounted in gold, he says [1].

How was hair laid flat for a brooch?

Speight spreads a cleaned lock on a palette with a knife, curls it with heated irons, fixes each curl with gum and leaves it under a weight for about an hour [2]. Three curls, one turned left and two right, make the Prince of Wales' feather, gummed to an ivory or opal tablet and finished with gold work and pearls [2].

Speight's basket plait weaves strips of gold-beaters' skin, each covered with hair, over and under one another; the plait is pressed flat, cut to shape and set in a brooch [2]. The braid under the Rijksmuseum brooch's glass looks like such a plait, though its record does not say how it was made [3]. Campbell adds hair flowers, cut into leaves and buds once treated with gum tragacanth [1].

The brooch below, catalogued by the Wellcome Collection under the subjects Victorian and British, shows locks laid flat under glass; its record gives no date [4].

• hairwork-techniques.csv (CSV, hairwork-techniques.csv) · file notes (JSON): where the values come from, version and license Data: Mark Campbell, Self-Instructor in the Art of Hair Work (1867), Project Gutenberg eBook #38658 (public domain); Alexanna Speight, The Lock of Hair (1871), public domain (facts restated); Walters Art Museum catalogue data (CC0): 57.2059; Wellcome Collection catalogue data (CC0): Museum No A642443; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, collection data (CC0): BK-NM-1120; The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access data (CC0): 32.134.2: five kinds of hairwork, one row each, with manual pages and, where one was read, a museum example.

What is behind the glass on a hair brooch?

This site reads jewelry from the back, since a setting often tells more about when and by whom a piece was made than the front does. A sealed hair brooch makes that hard. In the general construction drawn below, the hair lies on its tablet between the glass and a solid back, the metal wall is pushed over the glass edge, and the hinge, pin and catch sit outside.

Wider than a phone screen: swipe sideways along the diagram, or open it full size.

Some backs hold hair too. The Walters Art Museum describes a brooch of 1840–1849 with a small oval frame holding a strand of hair, set into its engraved reverse [5]. The Art Institute of Chicago lists a 1790 miniature by James Peale with human hair on the back [6]. Neither record says whether that compartment is glazed, so the drawing marks its cover as inferred.

The back can also carry a name. The Walters records H.M. Corbin inscribed on the back of each shell cameo in a necklace of the 1860s, catalogued as a cameo pendant [7], a different construction covered in cameo jewelry. A closed-back ring keeps what lies behind its stone out of sight in the same way, and the ring settings entry shows the colored foil that Cellini's account places there.

Whose hair is in it?

Speight alleges that the hair in a commissioned piece was not always the customer's own. The 1871 preface says it appeared "not to suit the purpose of professional hair workers to work up, in all cases, the materials entrusted to them," so the book teaches readers to do the work themselves [2]. Campbell's preface makes a similar promise: people who braid a dead relative's hair with their own hands can know it is "the actual hair" of the person they lost [1].

Campbell, who also sold hair goods, writes that nearly all the hair retailed in the United States was imported from Europe [1]. This page does not try to tell one person's hair from another's.

Mourning, love or both

The period sources name mourning as one use of hair jewelry, not the only one. Speight's closing page hopes the book will preserve "a memento of friendships cemented in youth" and call to mind locks "that death has long claimed for his own" [2]. Campbell calls hair jewelry beautiful "either as an ornament or memento" [1].

Illustration

Speight adds that hair designs were usually mounted in the black enamelled gold used for mourning, and suggests plain or burnished gold instead [2]. The Met's memorial brooch of about 1795 is "watercolor and hair pigment on ivory," painted with an urn on a plinth lettered with a June 1795 date [8]. The Walters dates a snake-shaped bracelet of human hair to about 1840–1850 and reads the snake as a sign of eternity and commitment [9].

Cite this page

Sources

1. 1Mark Campbell. Self-Instructor in the Art of Hair Work, Dressing Hair, Making Curls, Switches, Braids, and Hair Jewelry of Every Description. New York and Chicago: M. Campbell, 1867. Project Gutenberg eBook #38658. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38658 (full text)
2. 2Alexanna Speight. The Lock of Hair: Its History, Ancient and Modern, Natural and Artistic; with the Art of Working in Hair. London: the author, 1871. https://archive.org/details/TheLockOfHairItsHistoryAncientAndModernNaturalAndArtisticWith (scanned copy, read for verification; short quotations from the preface and closing pages)
3. 3Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. "Broche met haar van de dichteres Petronella Moens" (brooch with hair of the poet Petronella Moens), anonymous jeweler, Netherlands, c. 1843, silver, human hair and glass, BK-NM-1120. https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/200112770 (collection record (catalogue data, CC0))
4. 4Wellcome Collection. "Mourning brooche containing the hair of a deceased relative," Museum No A642443, image L0036167 (catalogue data). https://wellcomecollection.org/works/hkrq9y4v (collection record (catalogue data, CC0))
5. 5Walters Art Museum. "Brooch with Portrait Miniature of a Man," 1840–1849, watercolor on ivory, gold, hair, 38.567. https://purl.thewalters.org/art/38.567 (collection record (catalogue data, CC0); catalogue description paraphrased)
6. 6Art Institute of Chicago. James Peale, "Mary (Polly) Lawton Bringhurst," Philadelphia, 1790, watercolor on ivory (recto), sepia on ivory with human hair (verso), and gold, 1958.410 (Mary Louise Stevenson Fund). https://www.artic.edu/artworks/8250 (collection record (catalogue data, CC0))
7. 7Walters Art Museum. "Cameo Pendant," 1860–1869, helmut-conch shell, seed pearls, gold, 2008.5.8. https://purl.thewalters.org/art/2008.5.8 (collection record (catalogue data, CC0); catalogue description paraphrased)
8. 8The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Memorial Brooch," United States, circa 1795, watercolor and hair pigment on ivory in gold brightwork locket converted to a brooch, 32.134.2 (Gift of Mrs. Morgan Grinnell, 1932). Catalogue data row on the Wikimedia Commons file page. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Memorial_Brooch_MET_ap32.134.2.jpg (collection record (catalogue data, CC0))
9. 9Walters Art Museum. "Bracelet in the Form of a Snake," ca. 1840–1850, human hair, gilded copper alloy, garnet, 57.2059. https://purl.thewalters.org/art/57.2059 (collection record (catalogue data, CC0); catalogue description paraphrased)