What's a Hair Rat?

On Wednesday I shared a couple "common" items from the turn of the twentieth century. These items would have been easily identifiable to most people at the time. Now, however, they look completely foreign to us! Imagine what they would think if they saw a laptop computer...

Here are the items.

Item #1 is a glove stretcher. This would have been used
most often by a woman. When she washed and dried her gloves,
they would shrink. She would put the narrow
end into her glove fingers and squeeze the handles,
stretching out the material. 

Item #2 is a hair receiver. It would have sat on a lady's
dresser. As she combed her hair, she would take the pieces
which came out on the brush and place them in the receiver.
Hair was commonly used in making jewelry, mourning
wreaths and hair "rats." A rat would be a clump of hair
that they would pin in place, and then wrap their existing hair
around it to give more volume.

This is an example of a mourning wreath. The flowers
were made of hair from the lady who died.

This was the picture of the "Gibson Girl" she
was the epitome of feminine beauty. Her hairstyle
would have been produced with a hair rat to give it
height and volume.

This is a hair rat in the early stages.
This picture came from Gibson Glamour Blog
and was hair collected over a two week
period of time. Once hairsprays were
invented, the hair rat went out of style.
 

What about you? Were you surprised at the items above? They're definitely from a different way of life!

 

Next week I will be hosting three writing friends at my house for a writing retreat! I'm really excited to spend some time relaxing and fellowshipping with these gals. I'm taking a blogging break, but I'll be back on July 1st with a Minnesota Monday post...and I'm sure it will have something to do with the retreat. :)