Creating unique family hair-looms

A design student from Goldsmiths, University of London has used human hair to create a range of personal items from bras to shoelaces to skipping ropes.

Lydia Hunt’s final year project is based on her book 106 Ways To Celebrate Human Hair, in which she asked people ‘if you had your lifetime’s worth of hair spun in to wool what would you make, why and who would you pass it down to?’.

The anonymous respondents ranged from five to 94 years old. So far she has created 10 of the suggested heirlooms, which will be displayed at the Goldsmiths Design Degree Show in Peckham, London from 7 to 11 June.

Suggestions included:

A bra: ‘My friends and family could take it in turns to wear it. The hair would itch, but would be a little reminder of me’

A pair of shoelaces: ‘So every time my family want to go out when I’m not around they’ll still remember me’

A skipping rope: ‘I used to love skipping, so I’d want my children and grandchildren to play and think of me’

Egg cup

Lydia, 22, said: “It might sound morbid but hair is a major part of our identity and rather than just chuck it away, I wanted to think of a way to make use of it in a meaningful way.”

She was inspired to pursue the project after discovering a preserved pair of her grandmother’s 70 year old plaits and experimenting with how she might use hair to create objects.

She then designed and made a spindle to create a tea cosy using her grandmother’s hair.

The project also includes a formula to decipher what objects could be created based on the amount of hairs lost per day multiplied by hair length.

Lydia explains: “The formula is intended to show people what they could make with the hair they lose on a daily basis. For example, in May of this year, I carded 987cm of hair which is enough to make an egg cups.”

She added: “I wanted to revitalise our everyday discarded hair and have tried to create a ritual of preservation. It’s been great fun recreating some of the suggestions and I hope they are well received at the show.”

The items and the book will be on display at the 2018 Goldsmiths BA Design Degree Show, ‘M – O – D’, which runs from 7 to 11 June at the Bussey Building in Peckham, London.

For more details visit https://m-o-d.co.uk.

Follow Lydia on Instagram @spindled_stories.