Thread: Confusing the next generations

Originally Posted by clavichord

Thank you, Doc, for starting this interesting discussion! Everytime I have to deal with a razor whose conditions were altered during its life, I wonder what restoration means. I try to be the most "respectful" as possible, feeling both a sort of pride for being the owner of an object with a very long history and the responsability of having to decide about its future and contribute, in some part, to its life.

Up to now, after asking many things to myself, I don't know what restoration exactly means. Sometimes I find a very old blade of the end of XVIII c. whose scales were substituted 80 years later, in the second half of the XIX century. I think that all what I can do in such cases is trying to read the history of the razor in the best way I can, identify what is older and what is just less old. I'd like to find some very old scales, not impossible if they come with a very dammaged blade, and put those scales on the nice blade of the same period, but probably this isn't restoration. It would be just a new step in the long life of this razor, a different future; also, it would mean a loss of information about its past.

I think that future generations will have data enough to trace a very complete history of razor evolution. Probably this isn't the point. Just an example. I play harpsichord, a keyboard instrument with a very long history starting at the very beginning of XV c. and ending in the first years of XIX c. when the piano became the most comon keyboard instrument in houses. At the same time old-fashioned harpsichords started to be transformed into pianos changing its mechanincs! Makers made no more harpsichord for 100 years and "nobody" played this instrument until 1920's. The first new "harpsichord players", at the beginning of harspichord revival in 1920's, didn't know exaclty how the instrument should be played and they played it exaclty like a piano. The five-century-long tradition of harspichord playing and harpsichord making had been forgot. Some makers started to make new harpsichords, in part with the idea of improving the old ones in part without the knowledge of how an harpsichord was made. Today those new "harpsichords" can't be considered harpsichords: they are a sort of piano modified to sound a bit strange, probably a bit like an harpsichord because strings are plucked instead of hammered. Afters decads of inversigation, today we know much more things about harpsichord and harpsichord playing. We are rediscovering its long tradition just on the base of rare documents of different kind: descriptions, paintings, old "original" instruments, music composed for the instrument, ancient treatises, etc..

Sorry! too long

How will future generations have the data when there isn't enough data today to accurately pin down when it was made - unless we have some specific information about a company’s period of existence. We can guess based on scale and blade shape and makers marks handle material, etc. Once in a while you may find a Sheffield razor with a W <crown> R on it which means it was made during the reign of William IV from 1830–1837. V <crown> R doesn't mean much because Victoria ruled for 67 years. Once in a while we see a Fredrick Finny "Tally Ho" which had to be made between 1824-1852 because he died and the next razors we see are marked "W. Greaves - The Late Fredrick Finny".

There just are not many earmarks or standards that exist to date many, many razors. Sometimes we can say it was made after 1870 if it has celluloid handles because that is the time when celluloid came into use - if the handles weren't swapped a hundred years ago. One of the original frame back razors with the brass spine would be from the 1840s - but all we have to go on in most cases are approximations. Other than that it is mostly a few tidbits of knowledge and a lot of guess work.

This is where I think and hope that SRP will be a valuable resource for years to come. It is not only a place to discuss straight razors and associated paraphernalia, it is an historical record of the resurgence of straight razor shaving and everything associated with it.

I truly believe that historians 500 years from now will be reading these web pages. What we do here is not only fun, it is important too.

James.

Originally Posted by John Crowley

How will future generations have the data when there isn't enough data today to accurately pin down when it was made - unless we have some specific information about a company’s period of existence.

Relationships between data are even more important than data. Also, data need to be collected, crossed with other data, and organized in the best way. Nowadays this hasn't been done yet. We have a lot of data, but in "wrong" places: "secret" private collections and archives (storing not only blades, but paper too). Our SR Data Base is an example of how data can be collected and crossed; the project is just at the beginning, but I think that it's an important example. I don't need to see original pins on my blade to understand when it was made, if she's marked on the shank and the manufacturar's date of operation are known. This is the most trivial example of how data can be crossed, but there are much more complicated cases.

Few more examples of mines ( sorry!). Every year new small fragments of medieval folios containing music compiled 8 centuries ago are discovered in bibliotheques where those info were collected but never put in relationship with other info, and musicologists consider the find of one of these new fragments a very important source for the knowledge of the past. Sounds crazy, but in bibliotheques there is a lot of well archived info that is almost unknown. A practical example: musicologists need to compare different versions of a treatise and at this purpose they have indexes of how many versions of that particular treatise does exist in the world and where they are, but if a bibliotheque has a version of that treatise that is not present on the index used by musicologists, it's like if that treatise wouldn't exist!! On another side, even a fragment of paper of 1"x1" which contains music and later was used to repair another book can be the key to understand info contained in another source.

I promise:

Nah man, screw the future generations. They're out to get us anyway you know? Just wait and see

It can depend on the razor. For example, Simon let me shave with a giant Wostenholm last weekend that Joe Chandler had reground. If Simon had not told me so, I would never in a million years have guessed it was reground it looked that good. If he had put his mark on it, I would never have taken it for vintage, but that also changes my perception of the razor. There are other razors that have obviously be reground or rescaled. They're on eBay right now. To be honest, I really don't care if a razor is vintage or not - if it can fool me into thinking it is unaltered vintage then I will still think of it as such.

If I go to a flea market today and find an old little-known brand and it has a little "J" stamped on the blade, am I really going to know that the razor was reground by Joe Chandler's ancestors? I think it will still be just as confusing as not having a mark. Like Kelly said, there are going to have to be certificates of alteration

I would like to be able to know the history of alteration of a razor when I find one a hundred years from now, but there just doesn't seem like a feasible way to alert future generations of alterations by marking the razor.

Originally Posted by BeBerlin

I wish people would put their razors in the SRDB in their original states before enhancing them with coloured plastic, or worse.

Okay but how can people tell if the razor has already been enhanced? Maybe it had coloured plastic to begin with and then 75 years ago someone rescaled it with bone scales scrapped from a broken razor?

Also keep in mind that when we talk about data that seeing a picture of an elephant is very different than seeing an elephant!

It's an interesting idea.

I think that generations to come will probably have more info than we do, and it's not uncommon for people to believe that their razors have been modified at some point in their life, sometimes it's just a feeling - sometimes it's obvious.

I think this will be true in the future as well.

I would like to toss my hat in the ring on this. What this really comes down to is to the person that owns that razor. I myself think that an original plastic scale razor looks awful. There is a certain amount of character to the orginal yes. But that would be the prueist in me. I understand that when it was first made it was made for a job. It had a mission in life. That was to shave. Great! There are alot of really nice stock razors out there that are true work horses. But who's to say that shinning them up and making them look more elegant is a bad thing. On the flip side there are factory made razor that are a true piece of art that need to stay that way. I really think that there is more then enough razors that are stock out there that can be converted and alot of folks will see it for a work of art rather then a workhorse, thus now being a workable piece of art. Does this make it any better or worse, whos to say that. But I also agree that with todays data collecting abilities as what they are, having an original documented file of these is also very importent. When it is catalogged and documented do to what they do the form and funtion can be still figured out. I honestly think that we are on the rebirth of the single edged razor again. But this time it may not be bigger, but it will be a whole lot better. One more thing to that i think really addes a true joy to poeple is wondering what that razor have been through in its life. Just another joy of working with things like these. But please that is just my .02 cents.