Thread: My grandparents gave me an old shaving kit, can you help me identify it?

Hi, I just got a old shaving kit from my grandparents. Can someone help me identify the items? Model, price, year, any info would help!

I posted a tread on the wicked_edge sub on reddit as well. One person commented that this was made by George Brittain.

Link to the pictures.

Any help would be really appreciated!

Thank you in advance.

Welcome to SRP. I'm not sure if that is a Brittain, very well may be. Somebody will be along who can ID it for sure. Might be Gillette DEs, or maybe something else. Great old straight though. We call that pre-1800 stuff 'stub tails' and some of us shave with them. If that is your intention it can probably be brought to shave ready by the look of it.

Wonderful set. There are people here who can get that shave ready if you want. If not, awesome collectible.

I am not sure about the mark on the razor. Just looking at the general shape of it, it falls into the very old category. It is late 1700's perhaps. I am not a historian by any stretch. I would hang onto that for sure. Any old heirloom piece is solid gold in my books. Welcome to the forum.

WOW! This thing is old!!! Man, welcome to SRP, go check your tetanus vaccine, hone this straight and tell us how you feel!!! <<<KIDDING>>

Sorry for not having much to say about the safety razors but the obvious.

Take good care of the box, do not try to vamp it, IMHO just a dry cloth and some rennaissance wax is enough. The hardware can be salvaged and restored.
The straight razor... do not mess with it, pack it very well and send it - no doubt - to a very well reccomended professional (the guys here can point a good one for you), and explain to just neutralize the active rust and hone. Leave the patina as it is.

very nice old kit
+1 on the renwax rejuvenation it will come up a treat & since it is museum quality

Ripped off a pic in case the link goes south in the future ............

Wow - beautiful set...yes...that is a George Brittain...very rare, and that blade looks very early 19th century or late 18th century...has the iron cross...nice!

Thank you so much for your replies! I already love this forum!
I will upload some more pictures tomorrow, if there is something particular you want me to take picture of please tell me
Until then this is the info I now got;
A reddit user has done an incredible job identifying this piece. The information he provided makes a lot of sense.


This means that Rezdog might in fact be correct. Late 1700s sounds about right.

I definitely want to renovate it. I do not want to use the stub tail. (Hope I got that right) Not the 1940s razors either, I rather buy I new one. This kit already means something to me, I would rather pay for a new razor. I have one problem and that is that I live in Norway. So there is very few experts on this area in my country. However I saw that you have a "nordic" forum here. I going to try my luck there and see if anyone knows about someone from Scandinavia. Or is there something else I can do?

Yes, the stamp does look like a Brittain, doesn't have the Anchor though...for comparison pierrefley, here is a pic of another George Brittain Iron Cross straight razor, from the early 19th century.