Document Type

Report

Publication Date

5-6-2025

Faculty Adviser

Priyanka Basu

Abstract

Museum patrons often felt disgust and awe after I would tell them what the intricate wreaths in front of them were made of when I gave tours at the Crow Wing County Historical Society. Hair art was popular in the United States and Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with its peak occurring between the 1860s and 1900.1 Despite its popularity, it is not often discussed at length in fields that study Victorian artwork or bodily artwork. Many Victorian scholars were entirely put off by the medium because of the morbidity, and the practice is often dismissed as a type of folk art, like knitting and crochet.

Despite this dismissal, hair art exists as an important stepping stone between medieval reliquaries and contemporary body art of today. Hair art is important both as a Victorian mourning practice and as a type of bodily art that continues into the present. We can see this from magazines at the time that encouraged ordinary women to take up the craft, and from the large amounts of hair wreaths that exist in museums and historic houses across the United States and Britain.

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