2:01
The fact that hair remains after the body has decayed, it is an item that is so intimately related to the person who has left. for people living in the Victorian era in particular, it was a real um act of love and sincerity that you would create a piece of jewelry that would be made of hair from your beloved. This is a neckllet said to be Elizabeth Cook's hair. So, Elizabeth Cook, the wife of Captain James Cook, it almost looks like lace. It's made up of four strands of hair, um, which is a combination of light brown and gray. We understand that this neckllet was given to Elizabeth's friend Elizabeth Elliot. It was quite common, particularly for women, to share snippets of hair or hair jewelry to each other. Maybe the modern
one is making and sharing um friendship bracelets, but obviously hair is a bit more intimate. This is a small gold brooch that is a classic sort of high Victorian era example of hair jewelry. The hair in this brooch belonged to Sir Henry Parks, who's a noted New South Wales uh politician. Whether or not this was a brooch given in friendship or it was a brooch given after the death of Henry Parks, we're not sure. We do not know where this hair was taken from Sir Henry Parks, but he did have a lot of hair. This is an amazing piece of jewelry. It's a brooch that is in the form of a serpent. The serpent is a symbol for eternity. So the assumption is that um the person whose hair it was had passed away. It's incredibly intricate and
really fragile, but it shows the expertise of the artisan, the jeweler who created it. When you look at the historic newspapers online, you can see that there were a number of jewelers who were specializing in hair work based in Sydney and in some of the other cities throughout Australia. One in particular was a man called George Binder and he described himself as an artist in hair. So these are two really interesting objects. They are two miniature portraits um of John and Harriet Blackland. The fine little ropes are platted hair. They were probably made a generation after John and Harriet Blackland that have woven their hair into the portraits possibly of their parents.
They might have been bracelets or they might have been chokers to be worn around the neck. I think in most cases people are really freaked out. They find it really creepy but also fascinating. They were people just like us who fell in love, who lost people. There's something very human about remembering and having objects that remind us all the time about our loved ones and that remind us that we are also beloved.
