Horsehair
Encyclopedia
Hair
Hair is a filamentous biomaterial, that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Found exclusively in mammals, hair is one of the defining characteristics of the mammalian class....
growing on the mane
Mane (horse)
The mane is the hair that grows from the top of the neck of a horse or other equine, reaching from the poll to the withers, and includes the forelock or foretop. It is thicker and coarser than the rest of the horse's coat, and naturally grows to roughly cover the neck...
s and tail
Tail (horse)
The tail of the horse and other equines consists of two parts, the dock and the skirt. The dock consists of the muscles and skin covering the coccygeal vertebrae. The term "skirt" refers to the long hairs that fall below the dock...
s of horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
s. It is used for various purposes, including upholstery
Upholstery
Upholstery is the work of providing furniture, especially seats, with padding, springs, webbing, and fabric or leather covers. The word upholstery comes from the Middle English word upholder, which referred to a tradesman who held up his goods. The term is equally applicable to domestic,...
, brush
Brush
A brush is a tool with bristles, wire or other filaments, used for cleaning, grooming hair, make up, painting, surface finishing and for many other purposes. It is one of the most basic and versatile tools known to mankind, and the average household may contain several dozen varieties...
es, the bow
Bow (music)
In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones....
s of musical instruments, a hard-wearing fabric
Textile
A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...
called haircloth
Haircloth
Haircloth is a stiff, unsupple fabric typically made from horsehair and/or from the wooly hair of a camel. Although horsehair generally refers to the hair of a horse's mane or tail, haircloth itself is sometimes called horsehair...
, and for horsehair plaster
Lath and plaster
Lath and plaster is a building process used mainly for interior walls in Canada and the United States until the late 1950s. After the 1950s, drywall began to replace the lath and plaster process in the United States. In the United Kingdom, lath and plaster was used for some interior partition...
, a wallcovering material formerly used in the construction industry and now found only in older buildings.
Horsehair can be very stiff or very fine and flexible; mane hair is generally softer and shorter than tail hair. The texture of horsehair can be influenced by the breed and management of the horse, including natural conditions such as diet or climate. Processing may also affect quality and feel.
Horsehair is a protein fiber that absorbs water slowly, but can be dyed or colored effectively using traditional dyes suitable for protein fibers. It can be felted, but not easily.
Uses
Horsehair is used for violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
and other stringed instrument bows. Another use in the art community comes from pottery and basket weaving where the hair is used for distinct accents and styling.
The use of horsehair for fishing
Fishing
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....
has a wide range of applications. The most widely applied use for horsehair is in the fishing line. The hair is spun together and made into very long lines. One historic use was for gloves commonly used for fishing in the medieval age leading up to the 17th century in cold climates. Gloves woven from horse hair fibers were a very popular option in cold climates because horsehair is a very good insulator and also has a natural oil
Oil
An oil is any substance that is liquid at ambient temperatures and does not mix with water but may mix with other oils and organic solvents. This general definition includes vegetable oils, volatile essential oils, petrochemical oils, and synthetic oils....
and rigid structure that allows them to be woven tightly and remain water proof and warm. The fibers also absorb water much slower than other materials making them more desirable for fishing.
Crinoline
Crinoline
Crinoline was originally a stiff fabric with a weft of horse-hair and a warp of cotton or linen thread. The fabric first appeared around 1830, but by 1850 the word had come to mean a stiffened petticoat or rigid skirt-shaped structure of steel designed to support the skirts of a woman’s dress into...
was originally a stiff fabric with a weft of horsehair and a warp of cotton or linen thread.
History
There has been some speculation as to the first use of horsehair. Many sources indicate the Spaniards in the 8th century were the first to use horsehair as a textile. However, the first documented use was from the 9th century in SwitzerlandSwitzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
where the Swiss used it for the plans of St. Gall Abbey. The plans, a blueprint for a monastic compound in medieval times, are a national preserved treasure to the Swiss that were said to have been weaved with horsehair.
It was commonly used in the 19th century as upholstery
Upholstery
Upholstery is the work of providing furniture, especially seats, with padding, springs, webbing, and fabric or leather covers. The word upholstery comes from the Middle English word upholder, which referred to a tradesman who held up his goods. The term is equally applicable to domestic,...
stuffing (such as for fabric sofas) and as covering fabric for furniture. It was almost always the fiber used to make shaving brushes
Shave brush
The term shave brush or shaving brush refers to a small brush with a handle parallel to the bristles used to apply shaving soap or shaving cream to the face when shaving. They are often decorative; the handle is sometimes made from fine materials such as ivory or even gold, though the bristle load...
. It was also common in hats and women's undergarments. It was used in the hair to create the "Gibson Girl
Gibson Girl
The Gibson Girl was the personification of a feminine ideal as portrayed in the satirical pen-and-ink-illustrated stories created by illustrator Charles Dana Gibson during a 20-year period spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States.Some people argue that the...
" look, and in the 18th century it was used in wigs. Until the 20th century, it was commonly used to make fine arts paintbrushes, along with sable, fox, wolf, goat, and lamb hair. Calligraphy
Calligraphy
Calligraphy is a type of visual art. It is often called the art of fancy lettering . A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner"...
brushes are made from rabbit, fox, or horse hair, among others. For thousands of years, fishing lines were made of plait
Braid
A braid is a complex structure or pattern formed by intertwining three or more strands of flexible material such as textile fibres, wire, or human hair...
ed horsehair.
Other applications
In modern times, mane and tail horsehair samples with root tissue attached are commonly used for DNA analysis of equine specimens. Private genetic testing companies regularly use the DNA extracted from the root follicle of horsehair for relationship testing, genetic disease assays and determining coat color geneticsEquine coat color genetics
Equine coat color genetics determine a horse's coat color. There are many different coat colors possible, but all colors are produced by the action of only a few different genes. The simplest genetic default color of all domesticated horses can be described as either "red" or "non-red", depending...
.
