Your names are in the cowboy hat, and the winner of the necklace is….

Donna Killian

Donna, please send me your address at: SaintJohn@aol.com

I’ll get your gift out to you asap!

Cher 

This fascination started during a chat with my mother-in-law. We were looking at some of her treasures, things that have been in her family for a long time. One of those items was something I couldn’t identity. 

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I don’t know what it’s called,” she answered. “But women used it to save hair they pulled from their brushes.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Why would they save it?”  (Anything that comes out of my hairbrush goes in the trash or down the toilet.)  

Neither of us knew, so I did some googling and discovered Victorian hair receivers, “ratts” and the lost art of hair jewelry. 

In Victorian times, just about every woman had a hair receiver on her dressing table. She also had a lot of hair. After brushing it, she’d cull the broken strands from the brush and put them in the container.  Hair receivers were typically made of porcelain, glass, wood or celluloid. They sat in plain sight and were generally quite pretty.  They’re most easily identified by the finger-sized hold in their lids, designed to allow a woman to push through the hair.

Hair receivers kept a dressing table clean and free from loose strands, but what do you do with the hair? Commonly, the collected hair was used to make pin cushions. The wad could be quite dense, and the oil on the hair had a lubricating effect on the pins. The hair could also be used to make small pillows.  The soft texture gave it an advantage over pin feathers, which could be prickly.

The collected hair had another common use. A woman’s hair was considered “her crowning glory.” As a result, Victorian women had elaborate hairstyles. To get the fullness and volume, they used “ratts” (sometimes spelled rats).  A ratt was made by stuffing a hairnet with hair, sewing it shut and inserting it into the elaborate coif.  A ratt, roughly the size of a potato, gave a Victorian woman her trademark “Big Hair.”

A lot of us probably have a lock of hair in a scrap book. I’ve got a snip from my oldest son’s first haircut. In Victorian times, this sentimental practice went far beyond a snip or two in a locket.  “Hair art” might have been the “scrapbooking” of its day.  It was considered a suitable occupation for young ladies and gave rise to a variety of interesting creations.

Mourning brooches were common. With high infant mortality rates and the devastation of the Civil War, death was very much present. Jewelry made from the hair of a lost loved one was seen as a fitting memorial. Friends and family members often exchanged sentimental tokens. The hair used in hair art didn’t typically come from hair receivers. It was carefully selected for color and texture and had to be straight to get the desired effect. Hair jewelry is deserves a blog of its own. 

So what do you think? Are hair receivers gross or useful?  I’m still on the fence, but I’m in awe of women who made such good use of something I’d have thrown away.

My 96 ½ year old maternal grandmother is a pack rat. We discovered this when, at her insistence, the family began cleaning out her home and readying it to sell.

After three days of sorting, my sister, mother and I sat down to go through her jewelry boxes. The memories were fun – the bird and flower and dragonfly pins she always wore when teaching because her kindergarten and first grade students loved them. [The articulated owl was my favorite.] We found several cameos [see my August 7 post Carved in Stone--or Shell]. And pearls, of all lengths. Seems GGG-Great Grandmother Grace loves pearls.

In a box marked “Keepsakes” we found hat pins and buttons and old marbles. And a watch fob. The card with it says it belonged to GGG’s father, my Great Grandfather Ole, a Norwegian wheat farmer from North Dakota.

The chain is nothing fancy but there is a bit of bling on it that brought a wonderful surprise. The square gold locket fob hanging from the center held an old photo of my Great Grandmother Julia.

The find got me thinking: what kind of bling would you find on a gentleman’s dressing table in the 1800s?

A fancy button waiting to be sewn back onto a vest. We found a few of those, military coat buttons mostly, carefully pinned to cards identifying the owners.

Cufflinks of gold, perhaps declaring the gentleman’s membership in an organization like the Masons.

The most common bit of bling would likely be a pocket watch and chain, that extra little something that showed a man’s taste, his position, and sometimes offered a glimpse into his life.

The pocket watch has been around since the 1500s. Originally a status symbol only the very rich could afford, by the 19^th century most anyone who wanted one could buy one.

Attached to the pocket watch would be a chain, one end secured to his clothing, the other to the watch. Most commonly, the chain would hook through a button hole on his vest or coat, leaving the chain to drape across his middle to the pocket containing the watch. The chain was functional–it kept his watch attached to his person should it accidentally slip from the pocket–but it could also be jewelry.

My Great Grandfather’s watch chain was made of human hair. I assume the chain was braided by Julia for Ole–perhaps it was a gift for him when they were betrothed. I can imagine him, all spiffed up and looking proud, with that chain and fob adorning his vest.

What is a fob, you ask? Fobs are medallions that would hang from the end of a gentleman’s watch chain. Their purpose was to help pull the watch from their vest pocket.

They could be made of the same material as the chain: gold, silver, hair, etc. Here’s a good example – the fob is the small length of braided hair chain hanging by the button finding.

See the little loop at the end? From there the gentleman could hang almost any bit of bling he wished.

The fob could display the family crest.

Or be covered with gold and jewels.

It could be a locket, like Great Grandfather Ole’s. Or perhaps a cameo.

There were Double Albert chains, named for Queen Victoria’s husband, with a fob hanging from the center.

And the fob wasn’t an exclusively male piece of jewelry. Women commonly wore very ornate little fobs such as decorated balls or baskets of flowers or lockets. 

In Victorian times, garment clip chains were worn by women on the pocket of a blouse or waist band of a skirt and were worn by men clipped directly on the trouser pocket or vest pocket.

Women also wore their watches on long chains, or slides. The slide was a very long chain with a slide in the middle that could be adjusted to the length that looked best with the lady’s garment. The slide itself could be engraved, or decorated with seed pearls or small gemstones.

Or perhaps she preferred to wear a pin.

The possibilities were only limited by the wearer’s taste and financial means.

Does anyone you know wear a pocket watch? What’s the most unusual watch fob you’ve seen?

www.tracygarrett.com  

I have always loved cameos. I received one as a birthday gift years ago, white carving on a brown background set in an antique gold broach, and it’s one of my favorite pieces of jewelry. Not because I wear it all the time, but because of the history of the gift. My history.

Recently my mother, sister and I were sorting through my grandmother’s jewelry. Among the dozens of bird and animal pins—she loved wearing them for her kindergarten students—were several cameos. Some were plastic, others looked to be rather old. Since GGG (she signed her cards this way—stands for Great Grandmother Grace) didn’t collect fine jewelry, the old pieces were probably her mother’s. Looking at those wonderful pieces got me thinking about the history of the cameo.

The cameo is much older than I thought. Though the origins are still under dispute, most think the word “Cameo” comes from the Hebrew word KAMEA, meaning a charm or amulet, or from the Latin CAMMAEUS, meaning “engraved gem”.

Historians believe this carving tradition came from Alexandria, Egypt, nearly three centuries before the birth of Christ. Early Greek and Roman carvings featured images of gods and goddesses, mythological scenes and biblical events. Some immortalized rulers or heroes. During the era of Helen [323BC – 31/30BC], women wore cameos depicting a dancing Eros as an invitation to perspective lovers.

They’ve been used on military uniforms, rings, watch fobs, pins, amulets, vases, cups and dishes. They became a collector’s item during the reign of Queen Elizabeth to demonstrate status and wealth.

Queen Victoria popularized the cameos made of sea shells. Napoleon wore a cameo to his own wedding and founded a school in Paris to teach the art of cameo carving to young apprentices.

Stone, shell and coral are the materials most often used for the carvings. In stones, you’ll find agate and less often, turquoise.

Shell is probably the most commonly used material, because of it’s availability to carvers in all locations and financial situations. Among the shells used are Cornelian, Cassis Madagascariensis, Empire Helmet or Conch, Sardonyx (that’s the material in the pink amulet above), and Strombus Giga.

The cameos we’re most familiar with show a young woman, hair and dress appropriate to the period of the carving, in various colors. 

In the 1840s, the goddess Athena was a popular subject.

They even carved cameos of such things as peacocks and horses. 

Here’s one of my favorites from my research:

I still don’t know the origin of the lovely pieces in my grandmother’s collection, but that doesn’t matter so much. I appreciate them for their beauty and the history they portray—my history.

Do any of you own cameos? Do you know where they came from?

www.tracygarrett.com