Okey-dokey. Here's a July 15, 1909 Ypsilanti Daily Press ad placed by someone who seeks to come personally to your house and collect your hair combings. The nice long ones. Presumably you've saved them, right? Not cuttings--combings. This person pays cash! Cash on the barrelhead, ladies, for those combings of yours. After which this person will call on several other folks for their combings and then traipse right on home with a handful of different people's combings...
...to do WHAT?!
2 comments :
Part of a lady's dressing table would include a brush, comb, mirror, nail buffer, nail file, and a hair receiver. Yeah. That was a little dish with a cover -- with about a 2" hole in it. You poked your combings in there. My very ancient Brownie leader & neighbor explained this to me as a youngster. I believe the hair was used in maudlin Victorian jewelry. Really.
Very right, Lisele! Every Victorian lady had a hair reciever next to her hair brush.
It was used not only jewelry making, but also in making hair pieces.(My mother's generation called them "rats".) Actually, I have seen a lot of crafts made from the crafter's own hair. (Pillows and the like, often.)
Victorian hair jewelry was usually made from the hair of a deceased loved one, but also occasionally made from the hair of a living loved one--or ones own for a loved one.
Generally one used one's own hair to make rats, but I suppose they may have had a market, too.
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