Hair today...

The Hogarth exhibition is superb, and I urge you all to go. He is a gift to the researcher because his observation is so detailed - like a reportage photographer of today, he was so anxious to direct his satirical beam into every dark corner of human behaviour that he inevitably captured mundane life in all its complexity and absurdity. Rituals and routines are preserved - often in some unimportant corner of a scene - that would otherwise be lost to us.

In the 18th century, there was a choice: to wear a wig or to wear your own hair. A wig was of course practical - especially when the shorter bob-wigs replaced the full head-and-shoulders Restoration-style perrukes, which persisted into the first decades of the C18th. Nevertheless, even short curled wigs required styling by barbers or hairdressers, and when powdered hair became de rigeur it could be quite a messy business.

If you wore a wig, then you shaved your head, and wore some sort of soft cap or head-covering while at home.



If you wore your own hair, you still had to have it styled. This nobleman with the luxuriant ponytail (from The Countess's Morning Levee) has had his front-curls set in papers.


Below, we see the process in action on the countess herself, and the tongs (often heated in a small portable brazier) which are used to fix the curl.