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Expérimentations capillaires
La Matériauthèque • Tous les mois, Goodmoods enquête sur une matière dans l’air du temps, avec Plendi by Vinci Construction, qui jongle avec les matériaux rares et savoir-faire singuliers pour ses réalisations d’exception.
Symbole de distinction, de pouvoir, de rang social, de religion ou de beauté, le cheveu a toujours fait l’objet d’une obsession, d’un fantasme. Récemment, il redevient matière à réflexion et à expérimentation chez les artistes, artisans, designers et éditeurs en quête d’éco-responsabilité et de matériaux singuliers.
Sa force se trouve dans son immortalité : même coupé à la racine, il est impérissable. Autre atout : sa kératine, protéine sacrée, en fait un colorant immuable. Matière première en abondance sur la planète, la fibre ancestrale s’emmêle et s’entremêle aujourd’hui dans le répertoire des créatifs Antonin Mongin, Fabio et Martijn Rigters, Hermès, Métaphores… Décryptage (un poil) tiré par les cheveux.
Hair gets tangled in the fabric
The creative Antonin Mongin is developing an approach to hair that is as radical as it is experimental. A former student at the Ensad Lab research laboratory, he has resurrected an ancient practice: that of tying together hair and materials. Just as 19th century artists did, recovering from the bereaved a few strands of their loved ones to make relics such as accessories, paintings or medallions.
In league with textile design, the researcher weaves and braids human hair with other organic and imperishable fibres, mixing dyes, geometric shapes and other fantasies. The main aim is to give this sacred hair its full functional, symbolic, ecological and aesthetic place.
Colours, patterns and designs
Object designers and craftsmen are also keen to split hairs when it comes to ennobling the hair material. Following the example of Fabio et Martijn Rigters,that make hair an ornamental ink for objects and furniture. By applying a large amount of hair to a heated surface, the material instantly carbonises and acts as an organic dye. This reaction is caused by the main protein in hair: keratin.
More brutalist, Studio Swine freezes the hair in the bio-resin. The studio incorporates movement and gradation into its accessories inspired by the Qing Dynasty and the Shanghai-Deco era of the 1920s in its Hair Higway project.
For Cécile Arnould, hair is first and foremost the bearer of an identity and a memory that she seeks to materialise through ceramics sculpted from the hair itself.
The new lives of horsehair
Like human hair, horsehair has its share of surprises in crafting. Its length, shine and thickness make it a strong, malleable and aesthetic material. It is for these reasons that the Hermès house bought the Atelier de Challes, the last factory in the world to weave horsehair. Together, they are reenchanting the weaving of horsehair fabric, a know-how that has almost disappeared.
In the heart of the same workshop, Métaphores, a pioneering brand in the weaving and publishing of fabrics, attached to the textile department of the former saddlery house, imagines precious fabrics that mix horsehair with many other organic materials: linen, wool, sisal, cotton...
In a more whimsical style, Röd Studio composes tufted vases with horse hair. Hairy creations of creativity.
Horsehair in trompe l'oeil
The approach is reversed at Mexican artisanal workshop Caralarga, which takes on the hair aesthetic in trompe l'oeil. Using 100% vegetable fibres such as raw cotton and the remains of discarded fabrics, the company produces works that look like XXL atebas or ponytails in shades ranging from pearly ivory to dark earth tones.
