Hair museum showcasing locks from Marilyn Monroe…
INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) — Century-old wreaths made from human hair fill the partitions of Leila’s Hair Museum, and glass circumstances overflow with necklaces and watch bands woven from the locks of the useless. There also are tresses purported to come from past presidents, Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe and even Jesus.
For about 30 years, this hair artwork assortment in the Kansas City suburb of Independence attracted an eclectic group of gawkers that included the likes of heavy steel legend Ozzy Osbourne.
But the museum’s namesake, Leila Cohoon, died last November at the age of 92. Now her granddaughter, Lindsay Evans, is busy rehoming the gathering of more than 3,000 items to museums across the nation, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
Leila Cohoon, Leila’s Hair Museum proprietor, with granddaughter, Lindsay Evans, holds hair flowers made from Evans’ son’s hair. AP
Prior to its closing, the museum had guests such as heavy steel legend Ozzy Osbourne. AP
“Every time I come here, I feel her here,” Evans said Monday while touring with representatives of the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston who left with around 30 items. “This place is her. And so I feel like this process of rehoming her collection has helped me grieve her in a way that I didn’t even realize I really needed.”
It all began in 1956 when Cohoon, a hair dresser, was buying for Easter sneakers. Inside an vintage store she discovered a gold body crammed with strands of hair twisted into the form of flowers.
“She said forget the Easter shoes,” Evans said. “My granddad always said that this was the most expensive piece of the museum because look at what it started.”
Evans is preserving that one for herself.
This kind of artwork peaked in reputation in the mid-1800s as girls coiled the hair of the useless into jewellery or told their household historical past by intertwining the curls of family members into wreaths.
“My granddad always said that this was the most expensive piece of the museum because look at what it started,” Evans said about a gold body crammed with strands of hair twisted into flowers, the first merchandise Cohoon picked up. AP
But hair artwork had fallen out of favor by the Forties, as reminiscences have been captured in photographs, Evans said. Additionally, “this artwork was not celebrated because it was mostly done by women. And so in larger museums, they don’t have a lot of this.”
Her grandmother saved some from being trashed, wrote a e book and taught courses on the artwork kind, training a new technology of artists.
Often the hair artwork was housed in elaborate frames with unique glass, so when her grandmother began haggling with vintage sellers for the frames, they incessantly supplied to get rid of the hair.
“And she’d say, ‘No, no, keep that in there,’” Evans said.
Then her grandmother would hand them her business card and inform them to be on the lookout. Soon sellers across the nation have been calling.
“If it had hair, she got it,” said Evans, who sometimes accompanied her grandmother as she hunted for new additions.
“If it had hair, she got it,” said Evans, about looking with her grandmother for hair artwork. AP
The assortment grew to embody a wreath containing hair from every girl in the League of Women Voters from Vermont in 1865. A pair of crescent-shaped wreaths include the tresses of two sisters whose heads have been shaved when they entered a convent. A pair items even function taxidermy.
The frames crammed the partitions of her home and the wonder college she ran with her husband. She shoved them under beds and in closets. Eventually, the couple snatched up this building — a former car dealership — nestled between a fast-food restaurant and car wash.
A wreath of human hair around a poem about a younger lady who died is seen on show in the museum. AP
Celebrities caught wind of the attraction. Actress and comic Phyllis Diller donated a hair wreath that had been in her household for generations. TV character Mike Rowe filmed an episode of “Somebody’s Gotta Do It” right here. There may also be a few strands from Osbourne inside. When he got here to go to, Cohoon snipped a lock, although Evans has yet to discover it.
Evans said her grandmother was tight-lipped on what she spent over the years, but she anticipates the price of the artwork might top $1 million.
As Genevieve Keeney, the pinnacle of the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston, waded through the gathering, she eagerly eyed the jewellery that memorialized the useless, including a small pin containing the locks of a 7-year-old lady who died in 1811.
“I always felt it was important to educate people about death,” said Keeney, also a licensed mortician. “Our society does such an injustice on getting people to understand what the true emotions are going to feel like when death happens.”
Evans herself is struggling with a combine of feelings as she slowly rehomes her grandmother’s legacy.
“I want people to see all of this because that’s what she wanted,” Evans said. “But when this is empty it’ll break my heart a little bit.”
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