Hairwork

Hairwork is the central technique of sentimental and Victorian memorial jewellery. It answers two demands at once that all other jewellery techniques can meet only approximately: the piece carries a specific person - and it is made from her. Unlike an inscription, a photograph or a painted portrait, hair is not representation but substance.

Four principal forms

A lock beneath rock crystal

The most common and simplest variant. A small strand of hair, often in the form of a double loop, is laid into a hollow setting (a locket) and covered with a rock-crystal cabochon or a pane of glass. Rock crystal is optically clear, scratch-resistant and does not age - it stays transparent for decades. Glass versions are cheaper but more vulnerable.

Typical carrier forms: pendant, brooch, ring with a hinged cover, locket. The hair side often sits on the reverse, while the front shows an inscription, an enamel motif or a miniature - the hair thus remains intimate rather than put on display.

Plaiting

More elaborate and visually far more present. Hair is plaited in fine strands into bands or cords that are worked into jewellery:

• Plaited ring hoops - the ring consists of a gold setting with hair plaiting inlaid
• Bangles with a hair centre - a central plaiting as the decorative element
• Necklaces - plaited hair cords as carrier bands for pendants
• Watch chains - above all for men, made with the plaited hair of a wife

The finest pieces of the early nineteenth century show three-, four- and eight-strand plaitings, sometimes with pearls or small gold elements worked in. A well-made plaiting will hold for decades without loosening.

Weaving

The most technically demanding variant. Hair is worked on a small weaving stand - a wooden frame with fine wooden pins - into small tablets, often no larger than a postage stamp. These are used as the ground of a pendant, sometimes with gold letters (initials) applied. Weavings were especially popular in the 1830s and 1840s and are regarded today as the most impressive hairwork in terms of craft.

Sepia hair painting

A special form in which cut hair appears not as shape but as colour: the hair is ground to a fine powder on a stone slab, mixed with water and gum arabic into an ink, and used as a pigment for tiny miniatures (see Sepia Hair Painting). The typical motifs are a weeping willow over an urn, a mourner at a grave, an anchor.

The workshops

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, hairwork was an independent female profession. Well-known workshops:

• Forrer (Paris) - one of the oldest and finest houses, with documented pieces from the 1780s onwards
• Hartmann (Berlin) - the standard Prussian workshop, frequently working in court circles
• Stevens (London) - the English market leader in the High Victorian period, with mail-order catalogues throughout the Empire
• The Black Forest hair workshops - a distinct regional tradition with more than two dozen family firms

The working method remained stable across decades: a customer sent in a strand of hair with an order, the workshop produced the piece from a pattern catalogue and returned it. Turnaround time was four to twelve weeks, depending on complexity.

Social position

Hairwork was neither aristocratic jewellery nor a mass-produced article - it was bourgeois. Around 1830, a simple lock beneath rock crystal in a gold setting cost roughly a schoolteacher's weekly wage; a complex weaving with gold appliqué, a month's wage. For the middle classes this was an affordable but deliberately chosen expense. Aristocratic pieces (Queen Victoria's hairwork containing locks of Prince Albert's hair, for example) are technically identical, merely executed in higher-grade materials.

With the rise of photography from the 1850s onwards, the market for hairwork began to shrink - photographs were cheaper, faster and “more realistic”. By the turn of the century the genre had largely disappeared; individual workshops survived into the 1920s, after which the tradition broke off.

Hairwork today

In modern memorial jewellery, hairwork is a niche technique, but it does exist. Three fields of application:

1. The lock in a hollow setting as the classic form - today often combined with a fingerprint inlay on the front and a lock on the reverse. For this, workshops use modern carrier materials (stainless-steel hollow settings with a rock-crystal cover) that are considerably tighter than the historical gold lockets.
2. Jewellery for stillborn and infant children - where a child has died very early, hair is often the only memorial material available. Workshops here work with very small quantities (sometimes only a few millimetres of hair) and usually combine the lock with a footprint and the date of death (see Memorial Jewellery for Stillbirth and Infant Loss).
3. Pet jewellery - a lock from the coat or whiskers of a deceased animal, set as human hairwork would be. Workshops treat this without prejudice; the technique is the same (see Pet Memorial Jewellery).

Unlike in the nineteenth century, hairwork today is rarely the principal personalisation of a piece - it usually appears as a supplement to a fingerprint or an engraving. It has not regained its independence as a genre of jewellery, but as a respected accompanying craft technique it is very much alive.

Identifying historical pieces

Three checks help in placing an inherited piece of hairwork:

1. Open the hollow setting (carefully, with the right workshop) - many apparently conventional mourning rings contain locks or small weavings on the reverse.
2. Check the inscription - a date of death or initials establish the personal reference.
3. Look for a workshop mark - most good workshops signed their pieces, often on the reverse of a hollow setting or on the inner edge of a ring.

A lock should not be removed from a piece of hairwork - the substance is part of the historical value. Even where there is damage, expert restoration of the setting is preferable to making a new piece.