Leilas’ hair museum has a weird, unique, and rich collection of antique hair art, including different hair wreaths from decades, centuries, and even eras. However, you might find yourself wondering where and how the hair wreaths began. How did they come into being and become prominent today? Who were the first hair wreaths’ stylists? Read on to find the answers to all of the above questions and many more. Now at your fingertips is an unbroken history of hair wreaths like a detailed comparison of the two best water softeners and the GE vs. Whirlpool water softeners.
Hair arts generally take their roots in the 17th and 18th centuries to commemorate the dead and deploy a sense of intimacy and fondness. But hair wreathes particularly became prominent during the Victorian era(1837-1901). The British queen, Queen Victoria, who ruled the British empire from 1837 to 1901, sixty-four years altogether, wore a hair locket of her husband, Prince Consort Albert, around her neck often until her death. She began wearing the locket after entering a lifetime state of formal mourning upon her husband’s death. Her action further encouraged hair arts as a mourning symbol, which extended to being a popular culture today.
Nonetheless, the European and North American women had also indulged in hair arts, majoring in hair wreaths. These women stayed mainly at home during the day, and they, therefore, engaged in decorative arts precisely to while away the time and maximize their free periods. The inclination to decorate their rather terrene house with the artworks and showcase their artistic designs to family and friends inspired them the most.
A significant form of this ornamental work is the style of making aureate creations from hair similar to the ancient custom of putting a loved one’s lock in a locket. They were able to artistically make wreaths, lockets, earrings, bracelets, including toothpick holders out of hair. Various women’s magazines portrayed the different patterns utilized for these artistic creations—ever wondered how they got their raw materials, which is significant hair?
Many women had long flowing hair; there was an abundant supply of hair they could utilize for their suddenly fascinating hobby. Their procedure included weaving the tresses around thin wires and forming them into intricate designs of floral sprigs, flowers, leaves, etc. They also had buttons, seeds, wooden, or glass beads in their final arrangements. They made the wreaths into horseshoe-shapes, depicting the Victorian symbol of good luck with the open upwards to metaphorically take hold of fortune.
Many of their wreaths were eighteen inches or more in diameter, and they often mount them on a silk or velvet background and afterward typically place them in an ornate shadow box frame. It could be hard to find photographs during those periods as they were very rare or even non-existent. Thus, they often collect locks from family members or friends to weave them into designs as a remembrance.
Though women could also buy hair strands from local stores or catalogs and use horsehair occasionally to fill out a design. They would then weave the locks of whether blond, black, brown, or red hair into systems and a sign or note which had the name of the particular person they want to memorialize placed inside the frame. You can identify the hair receivers or keepers as jars with holes in the cover, which allow for the insertion of hair strands. They were usually fancy porcelain containers committed to the saving of fallen or clipped locks of individuals.
Primarily, the Victorians fashioned the hair wreaths from the hair of dead loved ones as a mark of honor and remembrance, with the strands placed in the middle. When another family member dies, his/her hair would be put at the center, and the initial lock moved outwards, and they would display the hair wreaths that contains the deceased’s hair, with the opening end upwards. Additionally, smaller headdresses, which were of broach size, were frequently woven from the dead’s hair and warn during the mourning period, which usually lasted a year.
Gradually and ultimately, they began to use hair wreaths as gift items to friends and loved ones as a token of affection and love. For example, young girls created scrapbooks that contain schoolmates’ locks, and autographs books began to include the signer’s hair in the form of a small wreath. Worthy of recognition is when Queen Victoria presented jewelry fashioned out of her hair to her children and grandchildren. The use of hair art as a token of affection, love, and remembrance is still in the limelight in today’s century.