Book Alert / Love Entwined -- The Curious History of Hairwork in America

Love Entwined -- The Curious History of Hairwork in America by Helen Sheumaker, UPenn Press '07, 250 pages, ISBN #0812240146. Index, source notes, selected bibliography, b&w images sprinkled through text.

The kind of hairwork described in this engaging book doesn't involve your hairdresser crafting an Afro or streaking locks to match one's outfit. When the author thinks of hairwork, she thinks of a largely extinct 19th century art, in which hair of living or dead family members might be turned into commemorative artwork -- woven into jewelry, for example, or wall decorations.

Helen Sheumaker, who teaches American studies at Ohio's Miami University, describes hair's use in lockets, bracelets and brooches. A man might use his deceased wife's hair as a fob from which to carry his pocket watch. One enterprising artisan crafted a tea set made entirely of hair. In a day when women had limited career horizons, the author says, "Hair working offered entrepreneurial opportunity in the 1860s and 1870s."