About

A special opportunity to create your own flowers from human hair using traditional and self-devised techniques of braiding, spinning, weaving, sewing and knotting. These gestures draw on Victorian mourning hairwork and other marginalised craft traditions long dismissed as ornamental or sentimental. Participants will create small hairwork flowers, which can be mounted as pendants or keepsakes. Synthetic hair will be available as an alternative to natural hair.

During the Victorian era hair was often weaved into jewellery for remembrance. We welcome back conceptual artist and historian Donna Lowson who will be leading this workshop guiding us through the history of Victorian hairwork.

Donna Lowson is an artist, collector, and former hairdresser whose practice centres on working with human hair to uncover the stories embedded within it. Drawing on Georgian and Victorian hairwork, the 19th-century practice of creating jewellery and keepsakes from human hair, she uses making as a research method to uncover marginalised craft traditions and bring them into contemporary practice. Donna has collaborated with Bankfield Museum, contributing demonstrations and workshops as part of “In Loving Memory,” and ongoing museum collection study visits and hands-on historical research inform her work. She leads workshops that invite participants to experience the cultural, material, and historical significance of hair firsthand.