Creative art student from Cambridge, England Kerry Howley was inspired by people’s aversion to cut hair — something that, admittedly, isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing thing to look at spread out all over a salon’s floor — and felt since hair is usually worn with pride until it is severed from the body, she created extremely intricate, delicate necklaces made of “severed” human hair in an attempt “to create a delicate balance between the viewer/wearer’s feelings of aversion and attraction.”

The hair for the necklaces was provided by one of Howley’s mother’s friends, a Japanese woman with hair down to her waist who only cuts it once every five years. When she did cut her it, she gave the 30 cm of discarded hair to Howley. Howley then used broken saw blades to cut and weave the discarded hair into shapes inspired by wallpaper patterns. She has worked over sixty hours on each of the five necklaces she has created so far, the rest of which are pictured below.

(Arts Thread via Oddity Central)

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