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Rediscovering Badger Brushes
So, I have only ever shaved using soaps and creams with a brush, I think my first brush was a Culmark Spartan.
Over the years, I have tried all sorts of different brushes, more or less always coming back to Omega boar brushes.
Though lately I have tried a couple of Synthetics and really liked them.
I have a couple of high end badger brushes and basically despised them. I always found them to be way too soft with very little back bone.
I should add at this time that I had exclusively face lathered. The only Badger brush that I continued to use was a Thayter (actually the 2011 special edition from Straight Razor Place.) and even then, I would only use it with cream, not soap and at best I found it almost satisfactory.
Some time ago, my Fiancée (I know and I made it to 60 years old without being married) asked that I get her a brush, a Kabuki brush no less. For anyone that doesn’t know, they are a special brush invented solely to relieve your wallet of any money you may have left, though I believe the ladies use it in the application of slap (make up) to their Boat (Boat race =face)
I went into a cosmetic store and asked if they had any such brushes. The lady I spoke to, after exchanging a few knowing looks with her colleagues, proceeded to pick up some keys and open a cabinet, whereby she was joined by a further two colleagues.
They proceeded to remove a large box from the cabinet, inside the box was another presentation box, and inside this was a small velvet bag. Inside the bag was well………………a brush. A fairly fine brush but a brush. The price of which brush, escalated at each unboxing juncture.
The whole performance was more elaborate than the occasion I bought a diamond ring for said Fiancée. (Buying diamonds is another way of further depleting any funds that may have survived the purchase of a Kabuki brush)
Anyway, I digress.
I didn’t buy the brush, instead I went home and suggested she may like to try a particularly fine, expensive, Taylors of Old Bond Street Badger brush that I had found to be perfectly useless.
She did indeed try it and liked it.
On my Birthday (Yes 60th), her daughter gave me a travel shaving scuttle, (I suspect the travel part was a hint) which I happily used for a while, sort of face lathering, but then putting the brush in said Scuttle to keep warm. I should add here, that we live in Qatar and the current temperature is 49°C (Note to self, try iced water in Scuttle)
Anyway, one morning it dawned on me that I might try the formerly useless, gifted brush with some Taylors of Old Bond Street Rose shaving cream, in the scuttle.
WHAT A REVELATION! I GET IT NOW! It’s like this big mop full of luxurious lather, it is so good, that for the last couple of weeks I have been using this exclusively.
Aforementioned Fiancée has been asking if I have seen the nice brush that I gave her. ( Luckily there are six Cats in the house that usually take the blame for stuff that I have either lost or broken)
Looks like I may have to relive the cosmetic store performance and purchase the Kabuki brush.
Wait, what if I try the Scuttle and Cream with a Kabuki brush.
