What is ‘hairworking’?

‘Hairworking’ is the fashioning of a jewel or object through the reworking of a part of the body into artistic form (e.g. lovers’ knots, anchors, hearts etc.) by a jeweller or ‘hairworker’ for the purposes of stimulating remembrance.  In England, it was most commonly seen during the Victorian period and often associated with mourning and Memento Mori.

In 2014 I won an a-n New Collaborations bursary to visit and research the anthropological practices of the hairworkers of Sweden.

I visited Våmhus in Sweden, the only place in Europe where this ancient craft is still practiced.  It is a closed rural community and skills are rarely passed on to those outside.  I was granted unparalleled access to this knowledge by my collaborator Anna Sparr, Textile Conservator at Frederiksborg Castle, Copenhagen.  Anna is the world expert in this craft; she was born in Våmhus, learnt hairworking from her ancestors and still has a home in the village.

Why is hair culturally important?

As a material expression of emotion, hair has been a longstanding preoccupation of my artistic practice – dead, but simultaneously “the vital surrogate of the living person”[1] it appears to embody a curious paradox.  In my PhD, A Grammar of Sentiment (2009), I researched the English Victorian craft of hairworking, the economies of C19th trade in hair and learnt how to make hairworked artefacts following original Victorian designs from contemporaneous manuals.

Hair is a potent signifier and features in literature, psychology and cultural theoryand has been a subject of enquiry for a range of artists, from the Surrealists to contemporary artists including Jordan Baseman, Alice Maher, Sonia Boyce amongst others.

What was my objective?

I went to Våmhus to observe the practice of hairworking first hand and to promote it for artistic and cultural purposes with the intention of helping to keep this traditional craft alive. I wanted to build on my historical knowledge to see what I could learn from it to develop my own practice as an artist.

I had worked with human hair on a large scale in 2012 when I was commissioned by curator Charlie Levine for Aedas Presents to make Shag, a carpet made from human hair knotted using traditional wigmaking techniques.  It was installed at Aedas Architects, Birmingham UK.  In placing Shag within a minimal controlled space where, ostensibly, it did not belong, it brought to mind feelings of discomfiture and awkwardness.  The carpet was accompanied by a video which provided insight into the process of its making.  Shag is an artwork which derives from the Surrealist tradition of exploiting unexpected juxtapositions of objects, materials and words to challenge our preconceptions of what is ‘acceptable’.

The project

My project began with two research visits in summer 2014; firstly, to interview Anna Sparr about the history and tools of hairworking and secondly in the wooded village of Våmhus to better understand the social context in which the practice has taken place.

My methodology consisted of oral history interviews, photographic documentation of hairworked samples, analysis of Swedish and English historical and contemporary texts and written notes and drawings.

We discussed how and why hairwork began in Våmhus, how Anna became interested in the craft, the breadth of her technical expertise, where and how the hair was purchased and the significance of patterns.

During the second visit I interviewed Joanna Svensson owner of Myrans Helmslojd, a museum of hairwork and basketry in Våmhus who identified how and why the town became the centre of this craft activity.  Våmhus, in the Dalarna district of Sweden is largely agricultural.  In the early 1800s a number of factors – the population boom, scarcity of farm land and cold summers – made life miserable for small farmers hence the need to supplement the income with crafts such as basketry and hairworking.  In a village of 1800, Våmhus had over 300 hairworkers.

Hair ornaments were a luxury item, difficult to sell in poor farming regions, thus enabling trade to take place in Sweden, the rest of Scandinavia and even further afield in the Baltic countries including England.  Those who emigrated to the USA took their craft with them.

Potential outcomes

The purpose of these visits formed stage one of an ongoing research project which feeds my knowledge of this anthropological craft.  Human hair within art is not new; my concern is particularly with contemporary artists who, like myself, have undergone a diasporic experience, and use hair as metonymy for addressing issues of identity and the self.  My proposal is to extend this work to make reference to historical and economic classification of hair according to race and colour and its inherent power imbalances speaking to the question “how can subversion of a historical craft process facilitate the unpacking of the postcolonial archive?”

 

Dr Bharti Parmar is a British artist and academic.  She was recently artist in residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.  Her current work explores veneers.

[1] Charles Berg (1951) The Unconscious Significance of Hair, p. 37.


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