It is as if the Age brought the English and Americans out of the dark ages and into the light. It was an Age where inventions sped up contact with people, lighted up rooms with electric lights, had telephones to keenly conduct business and converse with friends, and had installed inside toilets that flushed waste into new sewer systems. Trains, steam ships, ticker tapes, telegraph, time zones, photography, motion pictures, the combustion engine, and automobiles all came to life in the 19th century. In the latter half of the century, the industrial age came on full bore and created some very rich people. It also created the need for people to get away from industrialization. The industrial age in England and the United States brought out people and theories to combat the chaos created by industrialization. In England, John Stuart Mill invented and explained new radical philosophies as an antidote to industrialization. In the United States, people like Teddy Roosevelt (TR), John Muir, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Mary Austin, and Gifford Pinchot influenced Americans affected by industrialization that they could relieve their anxieties by communing with Native Americans and getting back to nature. TR went west to find his manhood. Others went to find wise Natives and learn from them how to cope with industrialization. The people who worked in the arts made it seem sentimental, refined, and delicate when making jewelry. Jewelry made out of hair was very popular in the Victorian Era, something that could be made at home or professionally, and seemed to identify with another age where sentimentality ruled and the artisanship was not industrialized but handcrafted; hairwork was made as a reaction to industrialization and the chaos it caused. .
Hairwork Jewelry as Sentimental and Mourning Art.
Hairwork jewelry was not an invention of the Victorian Age because the art form started being popular in the 1600s but it gained extreme popularity in the 1800s.