Why Victorians Made Jewelry From Human Hair

A bracelet woven from a dead sister’s hair. A brooch with a braided lock under glass. A wreath of flowers made entirely of hair from a whole family, framed on the parlor wall. To modern eyes these objects can seem morbid. To the people who made them, they were love made durable.

Why hair?

Because it lasts. Hair doesn’t decay the way the rest of the body does, so a lock cut from a loved one, living or dead, could be kept for a lifetime and handed down. A line from Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1860, quoted by several collectors, called hair the most delicate and lasting of our materials, one that survives us, like love. In an age before photography was cheap, and when death was close at hand, a piece of the person was the most intimate keepsake available. A University of Amsterdam history essay notes that the practice is far older than the Victorians: the Victoria and Albert Museum holds an English mourning ring with a hair ornament dated 1661.

Was it always about death?

No, and this is the most common misunderstanding. Hairwork was exchanged between living friends, lovers, and family as a token of affection, and the University of Amsterdam essay cautions that museums sometimes label a piece “mourning” with a question mark because they can’t tell. Prince Albert gave Queen Victoria a bracelet with a locket for each of their children, each holding a lock of the baby’s hair, according to a jeweler’s history drawing on the Royal Collection. Queen Victoria and Empress Eugénie exchanged hairwork bracelets in 1855, according to Lang Antiques. A University of Alberta thesis describes how mourning jewelry evolved into a fashion object with an industry of specialist makers behind it.

How did Queen Victoria shape the fashion?

After Prince Albert died in 1861 she wore black for the remaining forty years of her life and wore a locket containing his hair, which also held his photograph, according to Minnetrista and the jeweler’s page. Antique Trader and Lang Antiques both describe her example as turning hairwork from love tokens toward serious mourning jewelry. Her locket for Princess Alice, the first of her nine children to die, survives in the Royal Collection. See Victorian mourning customs and why widows wore black for two years.

How was it made?

Two ways. Professional hair weavers would take a lock and return a finished bracelet, watch chain, or brooch. But many families made it themselves. Godey’s Lady’s Book, the leading American women’s magazine, began printing instructions for preparing and weaving hair on a worktable at home in December 1850, according to Lang Antiques, and it sold starter kits with the necessary tools. In 1867 Mark Campbell published the Self-Instructor in the Art of Hair Work, a full manual of braiding patterns, which Cooper Hewitt credits with popularizing the craft in the United States; a London book, The Lock of Hair (1872), did the same in England. Campbell’s book is now free on Project Gutenberg, according to the Morrison County Historical Society.

The work was slow and fine. Hair was cleaned, sorted, and boiled, then braided around a mold or a wire core on a round table with weighted bobbins, in patterns from simple chains to hollow tubes and flowers. Hair wreaths, with each flower made from a different relative’s hair, were a family record as much as a memorial.

Why did families make it themselves?

Partly cost, partly trust. Antique Trader notes that many women and girls earned a living making hair jewelry at home, so the craft was also an income. And bereaved customers wanted proof the jewelry really held their loved one’s hair, according to a jeweler’s history: there were suspicions that commercial workshops substituted bulk hair. Making it yourself removed the doubt.

When and why did it fade?

Hairwork lost its popularity in the early 1900s, according to Minnetrista. Photography became cheap and ordinary, so a picture replaced a lock as the keepsake of choice; mourning customs loosened after the First World War; and the Victorian taste for elaborate sentiment gave way to plainer styles. Collectors still use Campbell’s book to identify patterns, according to Antique Trader, and a handful of artisans practice the craft today.

Is anything like it still done?

Yes, quietly. Parents keep a lock from a first haircut; families keep hair from a loved one who has died. Jewelers now set cremation ashes, fingerprints, and sometimes hair into pendants, which is the same impulse with new materials. See how to preserve photos and video tributes.

This is a history article. Customs varied by place, class, and family, and the sources are historians, museums, and period publications rather than contemporary records in every case.