DOROTHY! Get the egg money out of the cookie jar! (Updated)
A lock of (allegedly) Jane Austen’s hair made into mourning jewelry will go up for auction next week in Wiltshire.
The fine brown hair has been been made into a weeping willow, an often used symbol of mourning and also resurrection, with branches shading the decorated gravestone of Jane Austen.
Her name is lettered in hair strands on the gravestone.
While the willow/gravestone motif was not unknown for mourning images in Jane Austen’s time (we’ve seen some pieces of embroidery from the late 18th and early 19th century that use that motif), we think of hair jewelry such as that described as being more of a Victorian thing. Though check out this page–scroll down for a mourning ring that has a painting of the willow/gravestone motif and a lock of hair–but it’s not hair embroidery, like these pieces. The piece up for sale seems closer to the hair embroidery pieces from the description. If it really is using Jane Austen’s hair, perhaps one of her nieces or nephews had it made up years later. I believe Cassandra said in one of her letters that she saved several pieces of Jane’s hair for various people.
ETA 10 p.m.: In comments, Alert Janeite Chris added,
The auction date is actually 18th June and the Company is Dominic Winter Book Auctions. Their website has fully illustrated catalogues available ten or more days before the auction when close-ups will be viewable. The story has also appeared in a slightly longer version with a small picture in the Western Daily Press last Wednesday.
That article is very informative and shows a photo of the piece. There’s a little more about the piece; the provenance still seems rather sketchy. We’ll keep an ear to the ground for the results of the auction.
Cub Reporter Heather L. sent us a link to a page on author Candice Hern’s website, which has a photo of a similar piece of jewelry from 1792 all the way at the bottom of the page, so it seems to be proper to the period. This is all very interesting!
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:08 am
Nice jewelry, though I doubt I would have worn it even if I had lived during that era. The museum at Chawton acquired a lock of Jane Austen’s hair that had belonged Fanny Knight. Such an acquisition seems a wee bit more “normal”.
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:07 am
Ok, this dull elf does not understand from the news article how they think that it is Jane Austen’s hair when it’s provenence is unknown. Is it because her name is on it? My best guess is that not many people would make a morning wreath out of hair to honor the dead with someone else’s hair, right? I’m not a CSI expert, but what about a DNA match with known specimens? If it is possible, then it sure would answer the question definitively, and raise the price for the seller.
Just a thought.
Cheers, Laurel Ann
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:20 am
During the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century women from Våmhus in Darlecarlia in Sweden travelled to different countries in Europe making jewellry from hair to earn some extra money for the family back in Sweden. This handicraft is still performed in Våmhus and can be seen at the local folklore centre during summer. I haven’t found any text in English, but if you want to see some pictures you can go to this page (scroll towards the end of the page):
http://www.hig.se/~lbs/v_hus/harkull.html
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:46 am
IMHO the only way to prove it is a lock of hair from JA would be an ADN test, and apparently this has not been done with the hair in auction.
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Oopps! I meant DNA (ADN is in Spanish).
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:24 pm
The auction date is actually 18th June and the Company is Dominic Winter Book Auctions. Their website has fully illustrated catalogues available ten or more days before the auction when close-ups will be viewable. The story has also appeared in a slightly longer version with a small picture in the Western Daily Press last Wednesday - go to http://www.westpress.co.uk and type in Jane Austen in the search engine.
DNA can only work with the root of a hair - the various locks cut by Cassandra would not have included roots…
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Chris–thanks for the article, that’s great! And I thought that the root was the part of a hair with the DNA–that’s why they usually take it from someone’s hairbrush rather than a piece cut, as a hairbrush is more likely to have hair with an intact root, but as I don’t watch CSI, I figured maybe there was some new way to tell from cut hair that I didn’t know about.
May 24th, 2008 at 11:47 am
There are DNA tests for the hair shaft that examine mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) rather than nuclear DNA.
May 25th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Jewels with hair, remember me the beautiful work of Melanie Bilenker, (here).