"Hair-Painted Buttons" (Sepia Painting)
Purchase
New Hairwork Buttons
by Sandi
Sepia painted under glass is one of the rarest examples of Hair Buttons.
Hair-painted buttons to be exact. Microscopic detailing of hair, hand-laid in varying shades, colors and thickness. The artistry and painstaking effort of the person who devised this delicate technic is almost beyond belief!
Human hair is ground into a powder and mixed with the sepia color painted onto a hand-sawed ivory disc. The backs of these buttons are copper (with a very simple and substantial shank) is attached to the watch-crystal front by means of a rolled gold collet: this holds the painted disc in place.
With the beveled edge of the crystal allowing for the diffusion of light over the whole area, each button takes on the effect of a third-dimensional quality never seen in this medium before!
To view this type of button must really be an experience.
The whole effect of these buttons is that of sepia color, when magnified, as many as half a dozen distinct colors of hair can be identified as used in a single picture.
A collection of 15 of these miniature art treasures was featured in the NBB from the collection of Mrs. Mary Bunting of PA. (1955 by John H. Andrews)
John H. Andrews writes: All the buttons depict water scenes with people fishing from boats, casting the lines from the banks, and fishing off the bridge under which tiny boats glide with their human cargo. On one a man ploughs a field in the distance on which is a windmill and in the foreground a bridge. Both farmer and donkey are "painted" in black hair, his whip being a portion of darker hair about 1/16th of an inch long. The man himself is about 3/16th of an inch high with the animal in proportion. The tree in the right foreground is composed of a heavy trunk formed of black hair branching out artistically. The foliage (able to be seen only under magnification) is a series of tiny, feathery blotches made by sprinkling bits of tan colored hair to resemble leaves at a distance. The man in the boat under the bridge glides along on the body of the water whose surface is cleverly high-lighten by the use of silver-white hair. The direct foreground of this and all the other buttons (for artistic balance, no doubt) is unusually a portion showing bushes and water plants on wooded stretch of earth which undoubtedly is burnt hair, powdered to resemble natures own coloring and applied with the same transparent glue used throughout. There is no artificial use of lines by means of paint: the single strands of hair are applied to delicate the bridges, water plants, and reeds, buildings, boats, fish-line bridges, animals and other miscellanies where a stroke of a painted line would otherwise have sufficed. The whole over-all effect is inconceivable. This collection of hair-painted buttons could hardly have been "mourning" accessories for these are not the shadow of an excuse of sorrow in any of the cheerful scenes shown. That mourning, or other jewelry, in this hirsute medium could have been a forerunner of this art on these buttons cannot be denied though actual references to, and dates of, mourning jewelry as to their origin are scarce. The Brooklyn Museum has a piece of mourning jewelry dated 1788 whose subject is the accepted tomb, willow tree, and weeping figure. Reference to this is that human hair had glued to ivory to form the trunk and leaves of the tree, and weeping figure. Reference to this is that human hair had been glued to ivory to form the trunk and leaves of the tree, the dress and the shading of the figure, and the urn. Since this procedure is exactly the same as that used on these buttons it can be supposed that these were made about this time in the 1760's. In 1781, the first hair design has been attributed to mourning jewelry. But the subject of "mourning" buttons and jewelry should be treated alone as there is a great field to cover which is not particularly in line with these hair paintings with the exception of the methods and processes used. From an 1858 London review, mention was made of 5 tons of human hair on the market (blonde was the most desired) alone. This source came from Germany and France. The harvest in France in itself amounted to 100 tons a year. The hair merchants would exchange packs of ribbon, pins, buttons and other small articles for quantities of hair. It can be surmised that only an infinitessimal percentage of this gross amount of hair would ever find it's way into the production of hair paintings.
About the time of the Civil War in America the idea of jewelry and buttons made from hair was at it's surge. The fad lasted about twenty years with monstrosities such as earrings, watch chains and fobs, "ladies" neck chains and bracelets, rings, brooches, buttons, etc. "The picture of a widow going about with ear drops of shaped hair balls dangling from her ears as a reminder of her husband's whiskers" is on the hysterical side at the moment but who can say that the return of this fad might not be just around the corner even thought it has been out of date for nearly a century and a half?
Godey's of 1868 advertised "Ladies ornamental Hair" could be had for $7.00 to $25.00 and any woman could get Grecian Curls (arranged on a comb, yet), Hair Waterfalls, or Puffs. Hair jewelry could be had in bracelets, earrings, rings, chains, studs, sleeve buttons.
Certainly buttons of this artistic achievement and little-know-and-seldom-seen are wonderful keepsakes to behold and consider.
