Exploring Hair as Material Culture in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
For Victorians and Edwardians, a lock of hair cut from the head functioned as a lively talisman of memory. More than a frivolous beauty accessory, hair jewellery and keepsakes allowed persons to maintain relationships to absent bodies and histories. Today, these rare and precious artefacts shed light on the role of hair in the deeply affective and gendered material culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They also reveal the burgeoning industry in marketing hair for wigs and hairpieces. Exposing class and ethnic boundaries, they unravel narratives of visible and invisible women. They reveal a human need to commemorate, objectify, and cherish loved ones.
Talismans of Memory, Love, and Beauty showcases over 65 original objects from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Highlights include a lock of brown hair believed to have belonged to iconic Canadian war heroine Laura Secord and a decorative commemorative human-hair wreath, on loan from the archives of the City of Toronto‘s Museums and Heritage Services and the Annunziata Morant Collection. Other highlights include 3 contemporary sculptures by visual artist Colleen Schindler-Lynch, which use hair to physically manifest grief, and 38 pieces of Victorian mourning and friendship jewellery with selections from the Carole Tanenbaum Vintage Collection. One, a gold swivel brooch with daguerreotype portrait dated to 1879, is engraved with a devotional message between brother and sister, and features three brown curls intricately arranged into the popular design of the Prince of Wales curls.
Accompanying materials include photographs, periodicals, cartes de visite, and other historical objects on loan from the City of Toronto’s Museums and Heritage Services, the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre Archives, and the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection, further exploring the power and intimate charge of hair in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Together, these works document hair’s intimate power and charge in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Images, left to right:
Lock of human hair, brown, in a small coil. Attributed to Laura Secord.
City of Toronto Museums & Heritage Services, 1960.1515.27.
Gold brooch with Prince of Wales curls, coiled wires, and seed pearls, c. 1850–1860.
Carole Tanenbaum Vintage Collection.
Droplet brooch, table worked with 18K gold serpents, c. 1850–1870.
The Annunziata Morant Collection.
Gold brooch with basket weave hairwork and table-worked border, c. 1850–1870.
Carole Tanenbaum Vintage Collection.
This exhibition is curated by Dr. Esther Berry as part of her SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship held at the MLC Research Centre and supervised by Dr. Irene Gammel.
Exhibition
Thursday, August 27 – Friday, September 28
Monday – Friday, 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM
MLC Gallery, 111 Gerrard Street East
Free of charge and open to the general public
Public Reception with curator’s talk and refreshments
Thursday, September 13, 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
MLC Gallery, 111 Gerrard Street East
Free of charge and open to the general public
For more information regarding the exhibition
and for booking interviews with the curator,
please contact:
admin@mlc.ryerson.ca
416-979-5000 ext. 7668
Or esther.berry@mlc.ryerson.ca
