The upper class in 18th-century Europe not only had to sport a wig half a metre high, they had to carry a special comb to remove the weevils and other insects that made the wig home – dusted with flour and kept together with lard as they were. In another concealed pocket, meanwhile, a woman carried a fan, plus a box in which to keep the fan. She also needed a special device to remove her gloves, which were so tight-fitting that her delicate fingers could not possibly remove them.

Don’t think you were any better off if you were not a member of the fairer sex. Men had to pack all of their shaving equipment, which required a large case for the mirror, bowl and seven blades – one for every day of the week. A century later, they couldn’t leave home without their moustache wax, band and special cup – the band protected the waxed and dyed moustache during sleep, and the cup kept liquid from harming it.

How do I know all of these fascinating truisms of personal care history? Because I visited the hair museum in Sint-Niklaas.

Until last autumn, the hair museum was a separate exhibition in a dusty corner of a city building. But in November, Sint-Niklaas re-opened the SteM Zwigershoek museum after three years of extensive renovations. The result is an integrated collection representing a part of Flanders’ social history and heritage, plus a bit of archaeology, in a beautifully sunlit open-floor plan.

The history of hair figures heavily because the city bought the collection in the 1980s from a local stylist and hair products manufacturer who culled the pieces over many decades and ran a private museum for hair stylists in his factory.

Many of the pieces are outstanding, such as the large collection of ceramic shaving bowls used in barber shops. Sporting a variety of designs, one of them has this charming phrase in French: “All the best wives are in the cemetery” – emphasising the barber as a men’s club where no women were allowed. The museum also has several 19th-century barber stations of wood and marble, each with dozens of little drawers. Because men had to visit the barber every week or even every day, each customer had his own drawer for his specific products.

The museum also covers the surreal history of barber surgeons – when barbers were also dentists and pseudo-doctors. The small but pristine collection of blades used for bleeding a patient, bowls used to catch the blood and glass vessels used for fire cupping are an unsettling reminder of this mixing of trades.

The museum contains some devices that require explanation: the sewing-machine like contraption, for instance, that a wig-maker used to untangle and roll up human hair, and the round, two-handled brush with incredibly course bristles that was used to rid a man of dandruff (temporarily). Info cards are in place but in Dutch only.

One of the museum’s centrepieces is a collection of female wax busts found in the windows of early 20th-century salons. Wigs were pulled on and off of them to illustrate the new styles of the day like photographs do now. (See photo)

The final part of the hair tour shows the evolution from barbers as a male domain to the modern female-oriented salon of the 20th century. We have American businessman King Gillette to thank for that – his safety razor infiltrated the homes of men across the western world, making it necessary for barbers to bring women into the shops. A very fun part of the collection is headphones with readings from Flemish barber magazines of the 1920s. It seemed that the flapper style bob was creating a scandal across Europe – with one barber in France being fined for giving the style to a woman “without her husband’s permission”. Still, the industry was upbeat: “I am sure that short hair is not going away,” wrote one stylist in 1926. “It’s more practical and better for women who work. And it’s profitable.”

Just as you leave the museum, you pass four hair dryers, under which you can take a seat and listen to personal stories of people whose portraits hang on the wall in front of you. Average citizens, they talk about themselves and their relationship with their hair. One has dreadlocks, for instance, and another is a Muslim woman who wears a hijab. It sounds very simple, but, like the rest of the collection, it’s an immensely effective way to learn something very revealing about a generation or a culture.

http://musea.sint-niklaas.be