Why was hair used as a pigment?

The sentimental logic of the late eighteenth century demanded that a keepsake should contain the substance of the person remembered. A pure ink miniature would have been a picture; with hair pigment it became a referring picture. The technique thus solves a concrete aesthetic problem of its age.

How was the hair processed?

The strand of hair was ground to a fine powder on a stone slab with an agate burnisher, mixed with sepia ink and gum arabic as a binder and bound into something resembling a watercolour. The painting was done with the finest brushes on a thin ivory plaque (1.5 to 2.5 cm in diameter).

How can sepia hair painting be recognised?

Under a strong lens the pigment shows a characteristic fibrous structure - fine, sometimes still discernible traces of hair within the colour. Pure sepia miniatures without hair are smoother. On well-preserved pieces the fibrous structure is most easily seen in the dark areas of the image.

Can damaged pieces be restored?

Hardly. The sepia pigments are light-sensitive and fade irreversibly; the ivory plaque warps in humidity. Proper conservation is limited to halting the decay (UV protection, stabilising the climate) rather than restoring the piece. Most surviving examples are markedly paler than they originally were.

Sepia Hair Painting

Sepia hair painting combines two sentimental techniques: chopped human hair is worked with sepia ink into a pigment mixture and used as the medium for tiny mourning miniatures set beneath rock crystal.

Deutsch