06/03/2026
What you see here is a strand of hair. A single, physical thread that was once part of a living person.
That sounds simple, but hair has never been a simple thing to keep.
Long before photography, hair was one of the few materials that could travel across distances and outlast a lifetime while still feeling intimate and personal. It doesn't decay the way other organic matter does. Hair holds its form, and because of that, the Victorians (and the generations before them) kept it deliberately, carefully, and often tenderly. This wasn't a fringe practice or an eccentric habit—it was mainstream, widespread across class lines, and supported by an entire industry. There were professional hair artists, specialized tools, and published pattern books teaching people how to braid and weave hair into brooches, bracelets, watch chains, and shadow box arrangements. Hair work was a recognized domestic art, and the market for it was substantial.
It's also worth noting that not all hair relics were connected to death. Locks of hair were exchanged between friends, sent in letters as tokens of affection, and given by public figures to admirers who wanted something tangible to connect them to someone they admired. A strand of hair could mark a friendship, a meeting, a moment of significance between two living people.
Photography eventually displaced much of hair's memorial and sentimental function. Once a likeness could be captured quickly and cheaply, the need to preserve something physical and biological shifted. Which is partly why the practice feels so strange to us now. We've forgotten how recently it was simply ordinary.
This strand of hair belonged to Robert Owen (1771-1858), social reformer, founder of the New Harmony experiment, one of the most consequential figures ever connected to this town. It's also part of Historic New Harmony's museum collection.
Over the next four weeks, we'll be looking at this strand of hair from different angles: the cultural practice behind saving it, the provenance story that brought it here, the man himself, and the deeper question of what it means to preserve something like this at all. This strand of Owen's hair tells its own story about how he was regarded in his lifetime and afterwards.
takes a deeper look at one object from Historic New Harmony's museum collection each month, exploring it through a different lens each week.
This week, we start with the object, which is strange, human, and worth your attention.
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FURTHER READING:
"Artworks with Human Hair: Victorian Pastimes and Mourning Customs." Kentucky Historical Society, November 3, 2021. https://history.ky.gov/news/artworks-with-human-hair-victorian-pastimes-and-mourning-customs
Ebenstein, Joanna. Quoted in "The Curious Victorian Tradition of Making Art from Human Hair." Artsy, February 15, 2018. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-curious-victorian-tradition-making-art-human-hair
"How Victorians Mourned Loved Ones Through Hair Jewelry." Art & Object. https://www.artandobject.com/news/how-victorians-mourned-loved-ones-through-hair-jewelry
