Untitled (Case with portraits of a man and woman and hair ornaments) (c. 1870s): Art, History and Details

Untitled (Case with portraits of a man and woman and hair ornaments) (c. 1870s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The photographs of this man and woman, presumably husband and wife, are juxtaposed with clippings of their hair arranged to form their initials, A and M. In the late 1800s, photographic portraits and hair clippings combined in jewelry or frames served as mementos or memorials for loved ones. For permanence, the portraits here were vitrified on enamel, a process now used primarily for funerary monuments.

Object facts

• Title: Untitled (Case with portraits of a man and woman and hair ornaments)
• Date: c. 1870s
• Culture: 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: Photographs: photographs on enamel, framed in copper alloy metal frames; hair lockets: hair with pen and black and ink on cream-colored backing; case: leather with metal push-clasp and velvet-lined interior
• Dimensions: Image: 3.5 x 3 cm (1 3/8 x 1 3/16 in.); Case: 9 x 5 x 1 cm (3 9/16 x 1 15/16 x 3/8 in.)
• Collection: PH - Misc. 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2017.9

A detail from the museum

"Hairwork," produced in commercial workshops and as a popular craft during the Victorian era, was used to celebrate the living and commemorate the dead.

Collection credit

John Cook Memorial Fund

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.