Hairwork of the nineteenth century

Magazine Antiques, March, 2001 by Irene Guggenheim Navarro

(14.) Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, 1851: Official Descriptive and illustrated Catalogue (London, 1851), vol. 3, p 1223.

(15.) The information about Lemonnier and Charleux is from Chanlot, Les Ouvrages, pp. 34,36.

(16.) Conversation in August 1995 with Shelly Foote, assistant chairperson, division of social history, National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.

(17.) The Lock of Hair (London, 1871), p. 84. Speight is usually referred to as a woman, perhaps because the first name sounds feminine. However, The Lack of Hair includes the following advertisement for private lessons in the art of hairwork "A. Speight, Artist in Hair; Begs to inform ladies and gentlemen desirous of being practically instructed in...the Art of Working in Hair; that he [emphasis mine] will...wait upon them at their residences" (p. 122). Thus, Speight may well have been a man, which would be in keeping with the common practice of men owning hairworking ateliers, even though they were primarily staffed by women.

(18.) Vol. 41 (December 1850), p. 377.