Thread: where in the heck do rooney brushes come from?

seriously.. i keep trying to track down a company where they are made and i come up with nothing.. do they appear out of thin air? should i hire a private eye?

Try this link The Shaving Room • View topic - R A Rooney dunno if it will make You any wiser though.

aauhh.. this is a crazy read.. to be honest.. i guess it doesn't matter where the brushes are from.. it's just that every place that sells them claims they are made with the same old 200 year old tradition.. so i would think that there were some old brick factory with a muddy front lot and a high cast iron fence.. guess not.

all this rooney reading really makes me want to own one someday.. i'm really digging the whole. "i make brushes in a secret lab" kinda thing.. it seems obvious that they are english made with great care and quality.. who cares if they are too cool to have a facebook page or return a phonecall?

I was talking to a friend who was looking for a Rooney finest and said there were none to be found. I just did a precursory search and it seems that any website that lists them shows them as being out of stock or backordered. I wonder what the skinny is ? Glad I got mine when I did.

from what i can tell.. it's a supersmall operation.. perhaps they just can't meet demand...

or them chinese badgers can't grow their finest hair fast enough?

They are not the same company they once were. They were bought out by someone but still make very high quality brushes in England.

As far as the finest goes they are unavailable. They feel the current crop of "2 band" hair being widely sold for cheap prices is totally different than the classic stuff and they won't use it. Blame it on global warming.

Don't quote me on this but I seem to remember reading that Rooney was bought out by Vulfix. I'm not sure of the time line but I would guess it was less than two years ago.

From what little I know Rooney was an very old shaving brush outfit that fell on hard times. An entrepreneur by the name of Lee Sabini bought the company and brought it back to productivity. He put out some prototypes of the Finest that aren't marked but are 2 band brushes known as Sabini Specials and I have been lucky enough to end up with a few of them. Whether he is still the owner of the company I don't know.

Strictly speaking it doesn't seem to matter. Case in point the Simpson. Started in the East end of London in 1919, moved to Clapham where it became a well known brush, he then moved to Somerset. Now the company is owned by Vulfix and the brush made on the Isle of Man. So is it really a Simpson ? Noted brush collector DrP told me they are every bit as good as the Somersets and I don't think anyone has more Simpsons from all of the periods of manufacture than Peter. Say that to say , if it is a good brush I don't really care what location it was manufactured in. The Rooney Finests I have are as good as any brush I've ever had and I've had quite a few.

Edit; Interesting Joe, I hadn't heard about Vulfix buying Rooney too but I'm not exactly in the loop. I wonder how that will shake out (no pun) with Vulfix pushing their Simpson line. Maybe that is why no Rooney Finests ? All the high end bristle going to the Simpson line ?

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Edit; Interesting Joe, I hadn't heard about Vulfix buying Rooney too but I'm not exactly in the loop. I wonder how that will shake out (no pun) with Vulfix pushing their Simpson line. Maybe that is why no Rooney Finests ? All the high end bristle going to the Simpson line ?

The real question is whether or not you'll give 'em the brush-off.