Written by Krista Madsen –
The disguise publication of My Sleepy Hollow Show & Tell/The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was a resounding success, thanks in part to Hollow’s biggest tourist day in history (30,000 people could have crawled through the street festival). Ta. Nevertheless. We lost Sleepy Hollow Cemetery caretaker Jim Logan, who was scheduled to display some archival items from the historic cemetery, to a traffic jam that trapped him behind iron gates. It expired trying to move Broadway.
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A large and brave crowd braved the crowds of cars and pedestrians in our midst to visit Christ Church San Marcos (Washington Irving’s own home when he spent the last years of his life nearby). Among the dark old trees of the church, I was able to hear about treasures such as heavy metals. The stone head was affectionately named Ichabod (more on this next time). A broken piece of a statue was stored in a closet by local archaeological explorer Rob Yasinsak when his dog smelled something eerie and refused to leave it there. Sarah Mascia’s intricate embroidery and quilting of the invisible but pervasive “women’s work” at the Historical Society. The church’s impressive working keys, once used by Irving and passed down through the generations to current Pastor Bill Baker. And the cute little trains made from braided human hair just made everyone dizzy.
Collection coordinator Emma Gencarelli presents: Hair Locomotive, undated. Site courtesy of the Lyndhurst Collection, Lyndhurst Mansion, National Trust for Historic Preservation
This intricate hair train was hidden away in Lyndhurst’s vast collection of 10,000 items from the estates of three families (Paulding, Merritt, and Gould) until one day when a collection coordinator ‘s Emma Gencarelli discovered a water-damaged box tucked away in a cupboard. Inside was this delicate locomotive made of wire and intricately woven with black human hair. This work is placed on a piece of cloth with the image of Jay Gould, the last wealthy patriarch of the house sewn into it. For all his success, he had a somewhat brutal reputation as a railroad developer, financier, speculator, unscrupulous robber baron, and as one newspaper once called him. “The most evil man in history who flew like a bat through the eyes of the American people.”
Floating gently above the train, you can see soft hair curled up towards the chimney to represent smoke. Inside was a small doll who was supposed to be a passenger. The story behind this is a mystery. The giver and the owner of the hair are unknown. This hair is thought to belong to living humans, so it is a sentimental gift from nature rather than a memorial to the dead. The possibility of DNA testing is being considered. “We believe it’s a gift to Jay Gould because it has his name on it, probably c. It’s dated 1875, but we don’t know,” Emma explains. . “It’s not a eulogy, but a personal memento.” This is a fairly common thing I’ve recently learned, now that the hair train has entered my consciousness. Making art and jewelry from hair is a long-standing tradition, sometimes morbid and bizarre, and sometimes just a normal part of everyday life.
“Hair is the most delicate yet long-lasting of our materials, and like love, it keeps us alive. Holding a lock of our friend’s hair, we might almost look up to heaven, compare notes with the nature of the angels, and almost say, “Hold a piece of you here, as you are now.” It is not unworthy of its existence.
_Godley’s Lady’s Book, 1860
This mental hairball I’ve been teasing came together recently when I got to visit Tarrytown’s Gothic Revival mansion on my Lyndhurst After Dark Tour (which runs through the end of this month if you’re interested). Ta. Tours of the mansion are set chronologically, from the earliest residents in the 1840s to the 1920s, and include funerary customs, the early seeds of today’s Halloween, and Gould’s proclivity for the “dark arts,” which included studying astrology and phrenology. was focused on. A girl was looking into a crystal ball at a time when palmistry, spiritualism and communication with the dead were very popular. Amidst the embroidery and portraits covered in black crepe anticipating death, I was thrilled to find a wreath woven from hair in the library. Emma answered me: “Hair ornaments are a living monument to the Merritt family, and were probably made by the women of the family. Women’s crafts in the 19th century included weaving and hairworking. Ta.”
This is a hairy rabbit hole you want to go down, so here we go. Photography was not allowed during the tour of the mansion, so here is an image of a very similar hair wreath care from the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, with a description from the Sauk County Historical Site in Wisconsin.
Hair wreath with a bundle of hair in the center, 1881. Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, CC BY-SA 3.0
During the Victorian era (1837-1901), women in Europe and North America spent most of their days at home. To pass the time, they indulged in “fancy work,” which they showed off to friends and neighbors, and decorated their ordinary homes. One form of this flamboyant creation consisted of making flamboyant creations out of hair, similar to the old custom of putting a loved one’s hair into a locket. Wreaths, lockets, bracelets, earrings, and even toothpick holders will be made from hair. Women’s magazines featured various patterns that could be used for these pieces.
At that time, many women had long, flowing hair, so there was plenty of raw material for processing. The tassels were woven around thin wire to form delicate designs of flowers, floral twigs, and leaves. Wooden or glass beads, buttons, and sometimes seeds are also included in the final product. Wreaths could also be formed into a horseshoe shape, a Victorian symbol of good luck, with the open end facing up to catch good luck. The finished wreath was mounted on a silk or velvet background and placed in a fancy shadow box frame. Many of the wreaths reached over 18 inches in diameter.
The first room we visited in Lyndhurst was decorated according to pre-photography Victorian times. The young woman may actually picture herself doing elaborate needlework next to an empty tomb in anticipation of her future death. Because death was a normal part of life and something that should be celebrated in life, the drawing room was the place where the body was kept for many days until the death finally left the house and was moved to the actual funeral home. It functioned as a funeral parlor. Only then can the drawing room become a “living” room and not a dead room. The women in the adjoining library-like space are able to keep themselves busy with this handiwork, not always tackling themes that tend to disappear, but also using the wealth of material that is constantly growing from their scalps to make practical use of it. I just used it for.
According to the Sauk County site, “A hair receiver or keeper is a fancy porcelain container used to store fallen or cut hair, usually as a jar with a hole in the lid for inserting the hair. You can learn this art along with available pattern books, and there are even machine-made versions of the hairwork from companies that mass produce it. Hair wreaths were originally created to honor the dead, with the deceased’s hair depicted in the center. If someone else died later, a new lock was installed in the center, and the tendrils of the previously deceased were moved to the outer ring. Sometimes hair is made into a brooch and worn during the year of mourning.
The Victorian mourning hair art trend eventually gave way to regular sentimental keepsakes for the living, with girls including groups of classmates in their scrapbooks. Your Valentine might even include your hair. Or include a small hair wreath from the signer with your signed book. However, this is an art that has spanned the ages and spread all over the world, from the common to the rare.
Queen Victoria gave her children and grandchildren jewelry made from her hair, and Napoleon had a watch chain made from his wife’s hair.
The Art of Mourning site has a section devoted to “hairwork,” complete with the most elaborate braids (like the ridiculous word salad Trump serves and the spirals of fluff curled up on his head). (I’m not talking about that). It has an intricate hair chain. Cufflinks, shoe buckles (dating back to the 1600s), lockets, bracelets, crosses.
A tightly woven band of brown human hair is attached with gold hinges to an oval frame decoration with the initials MAS in the form of pearls, pilets, hair, and the horn of fertility. c. 1837. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Public Domain This mourning buckle includes a panel of braided hair, decorated with an elaborate inscription in gold thread and a small enamelled skull, all set behind rock crystal. It is set. An inscription, partially in Latin, indicates that the work commemorates Elizabeth Herman, who died on April 11, 1698, at the age of 27. From ArtofMourning.com
Through all these examples, you can see the growth level of the hair industry. From beginning as a way to express love in jewelry to a specialized industry of skilled artists/weavers who can create entire works of art from hair in jewelry, hair has become very important in the growth of the keepsake and sentimental jewelry industry. It’s important. It is a material that is personal, malleable, beautiful and immediately captivating, and deserves to be honored in history. All of these examples illustrate the price of jewelry made from hair and how much hair was imported into Britain throughout the 19th century. This proves that there is no material available for artistic value, no less emotional human conceit. They didn’t want any part of their loved one.
Today we may just leave the hair from the baby’s first haircut. I admit I have this for my oldest daughter. Her haircut was only a few years old during her infancy and early childhood when she was bald and had very little hair. And the scrapbook my mom made for me includes an envelope with a picture of my yellow original hair. As if spun from gold. They now sit in a small cabinet of curiosities in my bedroom, along with a small baby tooth and my father’s ashes. Not quite enough to be wearable art, but here we are, living in the tangled, rickety home of three women with long hair that forever clogs drains and filling brushes. So you can potentially start collecting.
Krista Madsen is the author of the wordsmith shop Sleepy Hollow, inK and producer of the newsletter Home|body, which she regularly shares with readers of The Hudson Independent. Subscribe for free to see all her posts and receive them straight to your inbox.
