Commemorative Headdress of Her Journey Beyond Heaven

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

A sculpture of a headdress titled, "Commemorative Headdress of Her Journey Beyond Heaven," created by Kenya (Robinson). The headdress is primarily composed of varying types of hair combs and blue nylon threads. The main body of the headdress is roughly ovoid shape, with black hair combs and black hair picks fanning up and back with the teeth pointing outwards. The black combs come to a point at the top, with two back-to-back black handled combs tied together. There are four tortoiseshell-colored handled combs, two on the top with teeth pointing down and two on the bottom with teeth pointing up, shaped to appear like an open mouth, near the front center of the headdress. Dozens of long, single pieces of royal blue nylon strings are strung through the tortoiseshell-colored combs, and melted at the top end to keep from slipping through holes in comb.

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