Hair.

Hair is powerfully symbolic. 


Humans spend a lot of time on hair. Our hair - its length, style, and color, or our lack of hair - is a highly visible message to the world about how we see our self and how we wish to be perceived. 


Hair is both highly personal and very public. Folklore attributes hair with a variety of magical powers, even Biblical stories relate this ancient belief - remember the tragic story of Samson and Delilah? 


Horses are among the very few animals who have hair that is much like our own hair, and perhaps that is one reason many of us feel so connected to horses. We see a bit of ourselves in them, hair framing their faces much as our hair does...


As an artisan jeweler working in the realm of horses, I work with a fair amount of horse hair, both in custom work and in work of my own inspiration. I have washed, sorted, braided, and even hand-dyed horse hair. I make necklaces and bracelets with lengths of braids, and I make tassels and other ornamental objects with tufts of unbraided hair. Most of this work is memorial in nature, adornments designed to honor the memory of horses who have left this world. Occasionally I have the pleasure to make something with hair from a horse who is still here, and even better I have had the lovely opportunity to make something with hair from a horse (or a mule, I'm delighted to add) who is around and who I know personally.


There is a history of sentimental and memorial adornments made with human hair, too. Examples exist in museum collections of nineteenth and early twentieth century gentlemen's watch fobs, embellished with lovingly woven locks of hair, presumably as a symbol of love and betrothal. Lockets were often filled with wisps of hair from a lover far away to keep them close, or from a baby or child as a memento of a life lost or at least of a childhood gone by.


Hair comes to mind for other reasons, too. In these days of rampant cancers, most of us know someone who has endured chemo or radiation-induced hair loss. It seems a distressingly common thing. One can hardly go out to a large public place without noting women wearing scarfs or other sorts of head coverings over obviously bare heads. Some do it with panache, others are clearly self-conscious. Wigs are even harder to wear convincingly, so bolder souls throw all pretense to the wind and opt for an outrageous color or style. And some venture out with their bald heads for all to see, challenging themselves and everyone else to respond honestly and authentically. A bald head can not be ignored. It will not go quietly away to let us pretend cancer isn't ripping apart the fabric of many, many lives. 


Once again, hair, and the lack of it, is highly symbolic. It can be the symbol of hope and recovery, when hair grows back after successful treatment... or its loss can be one of a series of heart-breaking losses that precede the final loss - of a life.


I have mentioned my dear friend who is living with advanced breast cancer. She is on my mind as I think about hair because she recently endured full-head radiation that has left her with no hair. She was told it won't grow back. Which, damn it, is really a moot point: she has also been told her time is short. In a fit of sorrow and regret, I think maybe I should have made something beautiful with some of her hair before it was gone... something to remember her by. Then I smile a little and think of all the ways she has been a dear friend, all the ways she has filled me with her kindness, compassion, humor and creativity. And I know that hair is not the thing I will carry in my heart in memory of her when she leaves this world. 


Hair is very symbolic, but the symbol is not the thing...