Does anyone ever wonder............?

Many of us use and treasure old razors. Some will have been passed down through families. Most of them will have a history that is completely unknown to us. Does anyone ever wonder when they are shaving with an old razor, what the first owner would have been like?
Rich or poor, professional, soldier or shopkeeper? Maybe he was famous, but most likely not. Did the razor cost a large percentage of his take-home pay? What sort have clothes would he have worn? For the very old razors, what would he have thought of space travel,jet aircraft or computers?
Or is it just a very nice looking sharp piece of metal to shave with?

This is too much thinking .
You should have a lot time on your hand think about all that stuff.Just put on your mind this not the best or not the worst blade you have on your hand and shave with it.that is it.Why we have to think so much details and waste our time who owned what they did,what color they had gloves etc airplaines computers come on Man.Just calm down and shave that is it.
I don't know i am this way.dont have too much time think about anything else just shave and out of the wild world

I haven't taken it quite to the extreme of wondering how the previous owner felt about this or that but I can never shave with one of my old Sheffields without wondering what stories it could tell if it could talk.

Every once in awhile i will be shaving and realize the first owner, and probably a few of the owners afterward, are probably long gone.

I recognize this kind of sentiments, Welshwizard. Shaving with an old and battered vintage razor always holds a encounter with history for me. Unfortunately, I don't know the previous owners of any of my razors, so I have to help myself with more general meandering historical thoughts. One of my friends has the fortune of shaving with razors previously owned by his great grandfather and other ancestors. He also has a fine tradition in his family for story-telling, and he can relive those stories, told to him when he was a boy, each time he shaves. I envy him for that.

I am fond of history, and of tools that connect us with it.
Without a history we have no identity, and ultimately, no civilization.

Best regards,
Bart.

Do you guys remember the twilight zone episode where the bum puts on a pair of shoes he pulled off of a stiff and after putting on the shoes he takes on the persona of the orignal owner? I sometimes wonder when one of my razors will do this to me. Maybe I'll be a famous attorney from the early 1800's or Mayor from the 1920's, or maybe a mechanic of the 40's era! Who knows?

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Originally Posted by welshwizard

Many of us use and treasure old razors. Some will have been passed down through families. Most of them will have a history that is completely unknown to us. Does anyone ever wonder when they are shaving with an old razor, what the first owner would have been like?
Rich or poor, professional, soldier or shopkeeper? Maybe he was famous, but most likely not. Did the razor cost a large percentage of his take-home pay? What sort have clothes would he have worn? For the very old razors, what would he have thought of space travel,jet aircraft or computers?
Or is it just a very nice looking sharp piece of metal to shave with?

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Sometimes I wonder these sorts of things when I drink water: Who drank this water before? What kind of waste has this water helped rinse through the millenia? What wars has it helped purge, what fish has it helped bring oxygen to?

When it comes to my razors though, I like that they are old and sometimes wonder how they might have been sharpened in the past, but generally do not give it much thought

Here we go:

YouTube - the twilight zone shoe theif

Not a complete clip but you get the idea.

I have though about it with everyone I have prob. Maybe because my first 5 were all from eather mine or my wifes people from then on I always wounder. With the 7/8 Goldedge I just got I wounderd who the hell most likely destroyed the orginal scales. And instaled the junk that was there when I got it.:hmmm:

Definitely. I'm an ancient history bug, and while most of my studies involve texts, there is also the archaeological end: old things that were once new, once closely tied up with a person, with their activities and loves and pains.

Someone owned my Wester Bros before me; probably not terribly long ago. Maybe he cut himself good while distracted by an argument with his wife. Maybe he took a modest pleasure in improving his shave with a dozen small changes in technique. He either honed the thing or had it honed, which means he had to feel daily for the feedback from the shave, deciding to hone it up now and not later. Who watched him shave, and with what admixture of love, anxiety, curiosity?

Like a pair of glasses, a ring, a fountain pen, a belt, a person's razors are all wrapped up in people's private lives and in their relationships with those around them, tangled into people's memories even when the object has been cycled back into circulation via Ebay.

All this, and "a very nice looking sharp piece of metal to shave with." And hey, my Ebay Wester Bros is up in the rotation tomorrow morning.

:rofl2::roflmao:rofl2::roflmao

Sham- you kill me!

Yeah- I think about that sometimes...but not while Sham is watching.

Right after I received my razors, I wondered what stories they could tell. I live in a small city just outside of Detroit. During the prohibition years this town was full of smugglers crossing over from Canada. The city was very involved with mob activity. At least one of my razors are from that era.

Now while I shave with them and occasionally think about their past and what their future will be.

I have thought about it before. I have 8 razors, and only 1 new, the rest I got off of ebay. Just tonight I shaved with a boker that I got off of ebay. It wasn't brand new and had a bit of wear, so I know I wasn't the first to use it. It makes me wonder where my razors will end up in a couple hundred years and if someone will end up using them. I don't have any children yet, but I hope that I keep the tradition alive and the razors stay in the family.

As soon as I start to seriously consider if I should buy a razor actually. I look at the conditions of the sale, where in the world, age of razor etc. and start crafting an image of such a man almost instantly. That idea of a former owner is frequently embellished by my fertile imagination as time draws forward. It's one of the cool parts about this hobby.

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