Hair jewelry — lockets, rings and other such items adorned with the locks of a loved one — is said to have come into fashion as an expression of mourning in the Victorian age. It was Queen Victoria herself who popularized the jewelry after her husband Albert died in 1861. @Allure's Alexis Benveniste writes about the history of this, how the craft of hairwork is being revived around the world, and why people continue to be repulsed by it.
"Fifteen miles into a 30-mile hike in Glacier National Park, when the blue sky turned black and lightning struck the mountains and made the very soil feel electric, it sure as shit didn’t matter what I looked like."
The term "fan" to mean avid supporter only came into popular use in the 19th century. Before that, words like "kranks," "habitués" and "lions" were used. There were even equivalents of today's fandoms that focus on a specific performer (like Swifties and Cumberbitches) in the form of Lisztians, who loved the composer Franz Liszt. Atlas Obscura spoke with Daniel Cavicchi, an American Studies scholar, about the history of fans and the words we've used to describe them. “How you name yourself says a lot about what you think of yourself and your very intense passions,” Cavicchi says. “But at the same time, another name or variation on the name, or another use of your name, maybe in a derogatory sense, may say something about what the culture thinks about you.”
The world made by hand, By Brian Kaller, originally published by Restoring Mayberry June 1, 2024
"...All the crafts disappeared in a generation or two – the coopers, wrights, milliners, cord-wainers and thousands more. All the stories handed down through generations disappeared in a few generations, until we all know only the same few pop-culture stories. Almost all the apprenticeships, lodges, clubs, co-ops and guilds disappeared... We are the survivors wandering the ruins of a post-apocalyptic society, but it has been a cultural apocalypse, a mass forgetting, and it’s still going on...
...I realize that we could not build some of these [buildings] now; the crafts to create them are forgotten, along with...[all] these [handcrafted] trades and … everything. The entire human infrastructure.
And I think: None of this world could have been built by the people now living in it."