I'm kind of in love with this hair. I think every day should be a Gibson girl
day.
Hi everyone, Kate here and today I'm going to briefly
be discussing some of the curling methods available to women around the
turn of the century. While a lot of people jump straight to rag curls there
were a lot of other curling techniques in use at that time. I've actually never
seen rag curlers recommended in any beauty book or article that I've read
written from that era. They are however mentioned in some period novels, most
notably in the Little House on the Prairie series, which I think is why
they're so ingrained in people's minds as the way Victorians and Edwardians curled
their hair.
To get a wider view of curling techniques, I'm actually gonna be
referring to another class of children's novel. I've recently been working on
reading my way through a lot of the books that inspired the Mary Pickford
movies and came across the most wonderful paragraph in Rebecca of
Sunnybrook farm. Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm was the first book in a series of
Rebecca books and was first published in 1903.
Now I have to admit it wasn't my favorite book of all time but it does have this great
mention of hair curling devices in a later chapter. All the young women are
getting ready for the big graduation ceremony and the author describes their
hair preparations as follows: "The feminine graduates to be were seated in
their own bedrooms, dressed with a completeness of details to which all
their past lives seem to have been but a prelude. At least this was the case for
their bodies but their heads, owing to the extreme heat of the day, were one and
all ornamented with leads or papers or dozens of little braids to issue later
in every sort of curl known to the girl of that period. Rolling the hair on leads
or papers was a favorite method of obtaining the desired result and, though
it often entailed the sleepless night, there were those who gladly paid the
price. Others, in whose veins the blood of
martyrs did not flow, substituted rags for leads and pretended that they made a
more natural and less woolly curl. Heat however will melt the proudest head and
reduced to fiddling strings of finest product of the waving pin. So anxious
mothers were stationed over their offspring, waving palm leaf fans, it
having been decided that the supreme instant when the town clock struck ten
should be the one chosen for releasing the prisoners from their self-imposed
tortures.
Now this passage seems perfectly echo what I've garnered from other period
sources. Rag curlers were certainly in use, especially in the United States, but
they were not considered the best way to curl one's hair. If a woman had money
there were numerous other more proper curling devices and techniques at her
disposal.
Well I hope you all enjoyed this very brief overview of historical curling
techniques. Please don't forget to comment, like, subscribe if you want to
and I will see you guys next time bye!
I've recently reading through books... I've recently been working on reading through
some of the books that inspired a lot of the Mary Pickford novels.... movies! What are
we talking about??
Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm is a book... yeah it was.
I'm actually not
centered. Oo. Oh well. Too late now. I've already filmed it.