Hair Pendant (Modern Memorial Jewellery)

Occasions

Modern hair pendants are commissioned on several occasions:

• After a death - the most frequent occasion. A lock of hair is cut immediately after the death (often at the funeral home or during a lying-in-repose at home) and worked into a memorial pendant by a workshop.
• During a lifetime, as a parent-child pendant - parents have pendants made with a baby's or toddler's first cut lock. A particularly widespread variant over the past twenty years.
• Partner pendants - couples exchange pendants each holding a small lock of the other's hair; a modern version of the historical sentimental ring.
• Sibling pendants - for children lost before or around birth, for siblings who died young, or as a piece passed between generations.
• Family pendants - several locks from different family members combined in one pendant; usually with a larger hollow setting or several small inner compartments.
• Provision for very elderly relatives - a lock is cut before a death that can be foreseen and kept for a later keepsake; often years in advance.

Personalisation

The modern hair pendant is frequently combined with further personalising elements:

Hair + laser engraving. The standard combination. Inner compartment: a lock of hair beneath rock crystal or glass. Outer face: laser-engraved lettering, initials, the date of death or a short quotation (see Personalisation Through Engraving (Handwriting, Initials, Dates)).

Hair + fingerprint. A particularly dense personalisation. Inner compartment: a lock of hair. Outer face: a laser-engraved fingerprint (see Fingerprint Jewellery). An iconographically coherent pairing of the two central markers of a person.

Hair + photograph. Inner compartment: a lock of hair. A second compartment or the reverse: a small photograph or a micro-engraved photographic image. A classically Victorian-looking combination, carried seamlessly into the modern piece.

Hair + ashes. A rare but documented combination. Two hollow settings, or a single combined setting holding hair and a pinch of ashes. Above all after cremations, where both are available as memorial substances (see Ash Jewellery).

Hair + memorial diamond. In the premium class: an inner compartment with hair, a central mount with a memorial diamond (grown from the ashes or hair of the same person; see Memorial Diamond).

Multiple-lock pendants. Several locks from different people in one larger pendant - parents, children and siblings combined. The standard form for family keepsakes.

Material

The choice of material follows the demands of wearability and tightness:

Premium:

• Platinum - very hard, a hollow setting stable over the long term, the premium option (from around €800)
• 18-carat gold - classic, soft enough for a clean hollow setting, skin-friendly (from around €400)
• 14-carat gold - the standard material, somewhat harder, takes a good polish (from around €250)

Mid-range:

• Sterling silver (925) - the standard material in the mid price segment, easy to work; the characteristic light tarnish is something many wearers deliberately want (from around €150)
• Vermeil - silver with a rolled gold layer, visually indistinguishable from gold

Everyday:

• Stainless steel - robust, corrosion-resistant, hypoallergenic; for daily wear without special care
• Titanium - very light, hypoallergenic, corrosion-resistant

Materials for the inner compartment:

• Rock crystal - the classic window material; a transparent cabochon that protects the hair and keeps it visible
• Mineral glass - a cheaper alternative to rock crystal, visually similar
• Sapphire glass - very hard, scratch-resistant, used on premium pieces
• Clear jewellery resin - as an embedding material; the hair is cast into the resin and permanently preserved

Form

The variants of form follow both the historical tradition and modern design preferences:

Round. The classic form. Usually 1.5 to 2.5 cm in diameter. The hair is visible as a small lock in the central compartment, often surrounded by a narrow gold mount with laser engraving along the edge.

Oval. The second standard form. Somewhat larger (2 to 3.5 cm), often with laser engraving beneath the compartment (initials, a date) or along the upper edge.

Heart. For sentimentally inclined pieces, above all parent-child pendants and pieces exchanged between partners. The hair sits in the lower hollow of the heart, the upper half often carrying an inscription or a small symbol.

Teardrop. An elongated teardrop with the hair in the broad lower portion and space for an inscription in the narrow upper part.

Book-form locket. A two-sided hinged locket with hair in one or two compartments. A directly historicising variant in the Victorian style.

Freely formed. From artistic workshops - the pendant takes on an organic shape (a leaf, a stone-like drop, an abstract composition) with an integrated window onto the hair.

Elongated format. A modern variant - a long, narrow pendant element into which the lock is laid as an extended strand; often with laser engraving along the long side.

Technical aspects

Making a modern hair pendant follows a standardised workshop sequence:

1. Handover of the hair. The lock is given to the workshop - usually in a small pouch or envelope, sometimes wrapped in tissue paper for safekeeping.

2. Consultation and design. The workshop settles with the client the desired form, the material, the type of hollow setting (rock-crystal cabochon, glass disc or resin embedding) and any additional personalisation (laser engraving, fingerprint, photograph).

3. Making the pendant. The pendant blank is produced - cast, stamped or formed from sheet. The hollow setting is prepared to the required internal depth.

4. Preparing the hair. The lock is trimmed to the size of the compartment. With long hair the lock is tied into a small bundle, frequently secured with a fine thread in a gold tone or in the colour of the hair.

5. Placing. The hair is laid into the hollow setting. With the cabochon variant, the rock crystal or glass element is set over it; with resin embedding, the hair is covered with clear jewellery resin and cured.

6. Sealing. The hollow setting is closed tight - either with a soldered gold mount over the cabochon, a screwed back plate or a flush pressed closure. Tightness is decisive for the long-term preservation of the hair.

7. Additional personalisation. Laser engraving, transfer of a fingerprint and an inscription on the reverse are applied in separate workshop steps.

8. Final polishing and delivery. The finished piece is mounted on a chain and delivered with the workshop certificate.

The total production time runs between two and six weeks, depending on complexity and the workshop's workload.

Commissioning

Anyone commissioning a hair pendant clarifies in advance:

1. Source of the hair - when and where was the lock cut? Is there enough of it? How long / thick / fine is it?
2. Choice of form - round, oval, heart, teardrop, book-form or free?
3. Material - gold, silver, platinum, stainless steel?
4. Type of hollow setting - rock-crystal cabochon (classic, visible), glass disc (standard), resin embedding (modern, permanent)?
5. Additional personalisation - laser engraving, fingerprint, photograph, a second hollow setting with ashes or another person's hair?
6. Chain - supplied with the piece, or already owned?

Many workshops offer online ordering with uploaded photographs of the available quantity of hair and the chosen form. For premium pieces and family pendants a personal consultation is usual.

Care

Modern hair pendants are easy to look after, but do need some attention:

• Protection from UV light. Prolonged direct sunlight can fade the hair, particularly with light or dyed shades. Store deliberately in dark rooms or in UV-blocking jewellery cases.
• Dryness. Moisture can lead to mould inside the compartment. The hollow setting should stay closed while the piece is worn; do not wear it in water (swimming, showering).
• Care of the material. With silver, occasional polishing with a silver cloth; with gold and platinum, cleaning with a soft cloth and water.
• Checking the seal. After very long periods of wear (10–20 years) the tightness of the hollow setting should be checked by a workshop; the mount is re-soldered if necessary.

Historical depth

The modern hair pendant stands within one of the oldest traditions of memorial jewellery in Europe. Three historical layers are present in every piece:

The Georgian sentimental tradition. From the 1770s onwards, a lock of hair beneath rock crystal is standard in English, French and German sentimental jewellery. The modern hair pendant follows this iconographic tradition directly.

The Victorian high point of hairwork. In the nineteenth century the lock beneath rock crystal becomes a mass practice - millions of Victorian mourning lockets contain hollow settings for hair (see Hairwork). The technical logic of the workshop is the same as today's.

Biedermeier family practice. In the German-speaking countries hairwork develops into a family practice - hair-mosaic brooches, plaited hair bracelets, hair-lock pendants as pieces passed between generations (see Biedermeier (1815–1848)). The modern family hair pendant with several locks follows this tradition.

This historical depth makes the hair pendant an unusually well-transmitted piece. Whereas fingerprint pendants are a genuinely modern invention and memorial diamonds only became technically possible in the twenty-first century, the hair pendant is a continuous jewellery tradition of more than 250 years. Anyone wearing a modern hair pendant wears a piece whose construction, meaning and cultural function have remained all but unchanged since the late eighteenth century.

Market and workshops

In the current German-speaking market there is a small but stable workshop scene for hair pendants:

• Specialist memorial jewellery workshops in Germany, Austria and Switzerland make hair pendants as a regular line alongside fingerprint and ash pendants. Most offer standard forms and pieces in the mid price segment.
• Historicising workshops in the narrower sense - usually small, often one- or two-person operations - make more elaborate hair pendants in a Victorian-historicising style, with rock-crystal cabochons, classical hollow-setting techniques and in some cases hair-mosaic work in the Biedermeier hairwork tradition.
• Jewellery designers and art workshops integrate hair pendants into a broader conceptual practice of memorial jewellery. Here individually designed pieces arise with unusual forms, alternative materials (wood with gold accents, silicone embedding and so on) and experimental combinations of personalisation.

Demand for modern hair pendants has been growing slowly but steadily since the 2010s - above all in the context of rising awareness of historical jewellery traditions, the practice of personalised memorial jewellery and the search for ecologically and ethically motivated jewellery (hair being an organic, personal, non-extracted material). The hair pendant is thus one of the few classical jewellery forms that survives in the twenty-first century not merely as a collector's item but as a living workshop practice.