An entire industry in 18th and 19th century France engaged many workers in the elegant arrangement of locks of hair - creating mementos given in friendship, and in celebrating multiple generations of a family, or in mourning. Small snippets of a variety of colors are usually a memento of an extended family - not always in mourning but sometimes - perhaps several lost to a single epidemic as happened back then. Some, like this one, arrange a large amount of a person's hair, or even sometimes a full long braid (that one celebrated a daughter's shorn locks as she became a novitiate in a convent) - you begin to have a sense of each type.
Very good to excellent condition for age and type, c.1850-80s - t would be quite likely this mourns the loss of a young child, 3-7, while their locks are still light in color, having not aged to a darker shade yet. So many families lost a child, or more than one. The size is mid-range for these. Nicely preserved, the outer frame is 7" x 6" oval, and the 3-D hair arrangement is nicely preserved beneath the deep convex 'bombe" cover glass. Sealed from the back.
