Shown above is a small collection of jewelry entitled "Mourning Objects", created by Central St. Martins student Andrea Schwamborn. The jewelry is composed of human material gathered from passed loved ones. There is clearly hair used, but human ash is mixed with the black bone china that the beads are made from, as well.
Hanging on to literal pieces of a loved one is nothing new; I remember taking a family vacation to Williamsburg and being shown women's lockets filled with dead soldiers' hair. A friend of mine used to wear a small vial around her neck containing her mother's ashes.
Aside from looking fairly rad, though, would you consider wearing such an object? Would you feel more comfortable wearing it if the hair belonged to someone you didn't know? Or should we just let sleeping dogs lie?
Personally, I'd rather raid a violin shop and take a bow-snipping for all my hair-related jewelry.
Yours,
Elissa.
[image via Dezeen]
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6 comments:
I can totally understand the instinct, but this is not for me. I'd rather have fleeting memories than an actual physical token. It feels a little unnatural somehow.
I wouldn't buy those if a loved one passed away- for some reason, I feel like having hair in a locket of a husband/wife would be better suited- maybe because it's hidden, almost like a little secret which makes it seme almost romantic. But I'm not married yet, haha, so I might change my feelings later.
Please do your research. I live in Williamsburg, and we do not have women's lockets with dead soldiers' hair. Owl and deer hair, yes. But no soldier hair.
Sal: Would you keep an answering machine tape? I know someone who has an answering machine tape that a loved one left a greeting on and listens to occasionally... but it's definitely not like wearing your grief on your sleeve.. or neck...
New York Chique: A very poetic response! I do like the idea of the hair being secreted away.
Anonymous: Aww, you must have just moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn! The Williamsburg I'm referring to is the one in Virginia.
Although I would like to own this type of item, I wouldn't be able to wear it because I would be crying over who owned it.
I'm from Brooklyn!
Queenoftheclick: I know how ya feel. What part of Bklyn? I used to live in Fort Greene.
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