Date: Sunday, April 27, 2025
10 am – 5 pm ET (including a 1 hour lunch break)
$230 Patreon Members / $250 General Admission
Limited to 12 students

Location: Industry City, complete address to come
Directions will be emailed to students two days before class.

The Victorian era was known for its morbid sentimentality. An art form particular to this age which expressed this zeitgeist perfectly was ornamental hairwork. Displaying wall art and jewelry made from a loved one’s hair indicated the desire to hold on to a human relic of a deceased relative or friend. Today’s workshop will focus on twisted hair and wire work most often seen in Victorian hairwork shadow boxes and commonly referred to as “gimp” work, as well as “palette” work.

Palette work uses smaller amounts of hair which is glued onto a base material such as vellum, and then later cut into shapes which can be affixed into lockets or onto cardstock backgrounds.

All materials for this class will be supplied (including ethically sourced horsehair and artificial human hair). Students will learn traditional working methods, while creating their own contemporary iterations of this bygone art form. Students can expect to complete a small bouquet suitable for framing, positioning in a small vase, or even turning into a brooch or hairclip. This is a great introduction to an almost forgotten craft that was very popular during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Karen Bachmann is a Professor of Art and Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, NY. She has an MA in Art History from SUNY Purchase and a BFA in Sculpture and Metals from Pratt Institute. With over 30 years of experience creating fine jewelry, including several years on staff at Tiffany & Co., she has exhibited her own work both domestically and globally. Her interest in obscure and arcane forms of personal ornamentation led to her fascination with memento mori and Victorian hairwork jewelry, which is the subject of her MA thesis entitled Hairy Secrets: Victorian Hairwork as Memory Object. She is a renowned expert in ornamental hairwork and has led countless workshops and lectures on the subject. She is currently working on a book exploring these themes.