Saturday, March 24, 2012

Making flowers out of hair


This is a lost art! When I decided to take on a little side project , I thought how hard could it be?

A better question would be how hard will it be to get research materials that are relevant?

Just the dying of the hair has been challenging and believe me, I am not going to give up my hard earned secrets!

Back in Victorian times people uses hair to create jewelry and decorative items to remember a loved one, commonly known as Memento Mori , which means "remember your mortality". Hair art was considered ladies fancy work . It seems to have been based on Scandinavian straw art.

Well, I have discovered that I'm going to have to beat my own drum and make it up as I go along using techniques from 1875 and some other cool tid bits I have picked up in my research.

I can't show you but one piece I have completed until the shoot is done. This is a rose made out of three bundles of loose hair, I used vegetable dye and also a non ammoniated permanent dye.