Thread: Is this a real filly or not?

Originally Posted by dustoff003

We are international not every members primary or native language is English, Roberto is from Spain.

Thanks it´s all i can do....... i guess my inform are usefull for you

regards from Galiza

Gracias Roberto por tu valiosa contribución.


OK, here goes...Please understand that I cannot do a word for word translation as it wouldn't make any sense at all. This is my interpretation of what Roberto has written.

The Filarmonica razors in Spain have always been considered as an every day razor. The oldest ones have extremely long blades and a double stamp, one with Jose Montserrat Pou and another one with different german houses names like Dos Hermanos...These have always been the most sought after. It was normal to have a the selling companies will have their stamp on the blades like "vacidores hermanos aquilino, lugo calle real 13" as these first filarmonicas were imports from another catalonian and they were of better quality than the than many others by Solingen that were more expensive and difficult to source. Here we were still using the typical razors and the english and german razors were more innovative, I am talking about the end of the 19th century. In Spain I only know razors made in Toledo from shoe horse steel from the 17th and 18th century and nothing new was produced in Spain until well into the 20th century.
Amongst the filarmonica razors there is the famous 14, we all have one of these, there were the first ones featuring only the Jose Montserrat Pou stamp. There were two types one for barbas duras (hard beard) and another for soft beard, their scales generally made of acetate or celluloid engraved with Jose Montserrat Pou stamp in silver or with modernists decorative motives like birds etc... I only know two, one named " crocodile " and the other one called the naked woman both engraved in ivory. I own both, more like collectible's than for use. They are all hollow ground. A fiftys series of them had a bull fighting scene (medallon taurino) etched with acid and lets not forget about the big innovation of the 40s, doble temple marked on the blade with the writing in silver and gold, there was a lot of hype behind it.
After the death of the founder there was a new release, the well known " novodour", shorter than the others but more comfortable to use with the scales made of bright coloured plastic.
I doubt that filarmonica ever used spanish blades (steel?) unlike Palmera and Montserrat with a leopard as a stamp, both great brands.
I have mentioned this before, i have a filarmonica box from the 50s and it says on it " since 1907" so do not expect to find any from the 19th century or earlier. I am sending you a retrospective in images from the oldest I know to the more common ones, the ones with illustrations on the blades and the ones combining german blades with filarmonica scales and as you can see on the pins, they are the original ones. at the end of the day Jose Montserrat was only a clever catalonian business man who saw a business opportunity where other people in this country did not dare to go. Greetings and apologies for my english.

Abur,Adeu, Agur, Adios

Thats what I got too........

Nice Job, jaycey!

My oldest JMP,blade is huge at 7/8-3.25 long,re-scaled in Ivory ( the trashed orig scales were red bakilite) one of my best shavers,I think from the 1920s.

Originally Posted by sharptonn

Thats what I got too........

Nice Job, jaycey!

I´m agree, you´ll get all you can, is a great traslation of my ieroglific, but if i´d write in my original lenguage (potuguese) sure will be worse, about the JMP of red baquilite scales I think could be of the 30s or 40s oround our civil war, unfourtunaly we habe not an writen history around JMP and sons, and alwais speak by talking references. Here you habe a pair of articles writen in 1924, I habe not the originals, too spensives, but provably can tell us something about the pre civil war razor factoryes. Muito obrigado e minhas disculpas per o meu mao inglés, mas ca nao he costume ensinar ás crinças idiomas de fora, o pouco que conheço e produto de dois meses em Wesport, milhor falando, saudos a tudos.

I just had a Filarmonica 13 on my stones!



Softer steel than I thought it would have, small nice bevel.
Started with Botan nagura on Nakayama kiita, then the rest of naguras... sharpen sharpen swisch swosch and did the last on my Otaniyama.

Double post!