Monday, September 15, 2008

The Family Curls - Cabinet of Curiosities 9th Edition


Here's a few items from my personal Cabinet of Curiosities - well, the family's really. This quite lovely bowl has always been around - first at my Na's, then at my Mum and Dad's. It's definitely a conversation piece - although sometimes the conversation quickly stops with a gasp or an eweh.

You'll see the envelopes there - one says 'David 16 months Thanks to Diane". Apparently I gave my baby brother an unscheduled haircut - as I heard it many years later, Mum was very cross! but there's another curl of his too in the other envelope.

I'm sure the very blond one in the bowl was mum's, then one was supposed to be Na's and one Grandpa Scott's. Which is which I may never know, although one curl has purple ribbon; the other pink. Could they be that old?

There's an untidy piece there too, which I think is mine, as I remember hearing once about a scizzor-wielding brother. (I wasn't all that neglected - there's another story to come someday about my hair.)

The reason I chose this particular set of curiosities for now is that they may someday be dispersed as a little collection, since I'm going to see that 'baby bother' gets his locks back, for instance.

I thought I'd look around the Internet and in old newspapers and see lots about saving baby's curls, but so far, I've found little about us ordinary people. Here's a few interesting ones though.

Someone saved the poet Shelley's boyish curls, but they may have disappeared, England.
http://www.rc.umd.edu/reference/misc/shelleysites/england/Poole/Poole.html

In the Salomons Museum, Canterbury Christ Church University, England, there are at least two displays of family hair: http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/salomons-museum/

A UCA professor’s “baby locks” (Gene Hatfield, 1929) are archived at the University of Central Arkansas, USA: http://archives.uca.edu/

S9meone in Pittsburgh, USA has preserved football coach William 'Lone Star' Dietz' baby curls: http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1089275/index.htm

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