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For the jewellers and small business
owners who specialize in this unique craft,
there is often an origin story that begins with
making a keepsake of their own horse’s hair.
Colleen McGale’s jewellery business has
been in operation since 2011, when she
made a bracelet to memorialize a beloved
horse — although she made her first horsehair
creation at the age of 12.
“My parents were upholsterers (and)
entrepreneurs. They had all this upholstery
stuff and so I took the mane from my
horse and I made these leather wrapped
tassels. They were all secured with clips for
upholstery,” McGale explains.
She still has those tassels today, decades
later. One thing about horsehair as a textile —
it is durable.
As the owner of Verstara, McGale focuses
on rings, pendant necklaces and bracelets —
and she’s recently added engagement rings to
her shop.
“They’re built to wear,” McGale says.
Customers often express worry about their
horsehair pieces falling apart. “I’m like, ‘No, no.
Wear it. Like, wear it everywhere.’ I wear mine
in the shower.”
Most of McGale’s customers reach out
to her following the loss of a horse — she
estimates that around three quarters of
the pieces she creates are memorial — but
she encourages horse owners to think
about getting in touch with her while their
treasured horse is still alive.
“If you have the option, have something
made before you lose them, because then it’s
not such a sad, emotional piece,” says McGale.
Karen Wares, the owner of Horsehair
Creations by Karen, says the number of
people creating these bespoke pieces is
small, but they make up a real community of
creators and horse lovers who share tips and
knowledge with each other.
“We don’t look at each other as
competition, but as colleagues,” she says. She’s
referred potential customers to Verstara, if the
style is a better match.
Wares, like McGale, was inspired to start
her company after losing a treasured horse.
In 2020, she started making bracelets and
gifting them to friends and family. Seeing the
Photo Carla Lehman Photography
impact of the pieces, she decided to start her
company, focusing on the casual, understated
bracelets and rings she still makes today.
Both business owners say that many people
are surprised to learn a piece contains horsehair
at all — the hair, as textile, looks much more
refined than many customers imagine.
Wares likes to draw inspiration from
typical jewellery, finding elegant ways to
incorporate horsehair.
“It’s subtle enough where, if they don’t
want to talk about it, or it’s hard, but they
still want to have them with them, it’s not
something that they have to explain, because
it just looks like … it’s a piece of jewellery. So
if they want to explain the sentiment behind
they can,” McGale says.
These pieces offer horse owners a way to
carry one (or many) of their horses with them
throughout their lives — whether they’ve lost
a horse, or their horse is boarded somewhere
far away.
For Wares and McGale, what matters most
are the connections in this business — between
creators and their customers, between the
business owners themselves, and between
humans and their horses.
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