Thread: Straight razor history

I have been trying to find history on the early straight razors. From what I have read, a gentleman named Benjamin Huntsman invented the cast steel razor. However, I do not see his name among any brand listings. Wikipedia is extremely vague (and not always reliable). It indicates that there was resistance to the modern razor in Britain, and it was more successful in France, though with a nationalist backlash. That is all I have been able to find out.

Would you please tell me more about Mr. Huntsman, and early razor manufacturers (18th century)?

Thank you.

You might find this interesting?

To the best of my knowledge Benjamin Huntsman didn't make any razors.

There are a lot of competing stories about the invention of his cast steel process, and it's pretty much impossible at this point to know where the truth lies. I love the shivering beggar story of Samuel Walker (enough that it's the name of my website!), but it's probably not true. Walker, to the best of my knowledge, didn't see the kind of success you'd expect if he'd stolen the process. That part of the story also doesn't precisely sit well with the part where Huntsman had to sell all his steel to France because the old Sheffield guys were hidebound.

These days I kind of wonder if that 'sale to France' part wasn't a story from London, which had quite the rivalry with Sheffield.

As for the earliest straight razors, I think this represents the earliest one I've seen. Yes, it's a painting, but from the school of Dutch still life that was meant to be as realistic as possible. It's easy to tell that razor had tortoise shell scales and a worked silver pommel (which seems to have been quite common on razors from the earlier part of the 18th century). If you look closely, you can also see that it has a long, functional tail.

Where was it made? Unknown. Probably Holland. If memory serves, the early razor on display at the Mayflower museum in Plymouth, MA is described as Dutch and looks a lot like that one.

Thank you for the information. It looks as though the first actual modern straight razors were manufactured in France from Huntsman steel?

From when is the painting?

Originally Posted by fmlondon

Thank you for the information. It looks as though the first actual modern straight razors were manufactured in France from Huntsman steel?

That all depends on what you mean by modern.

I think pretty much any of us could pick up the razor in van Hoogstraten's painting and shave with it. The chances are good that while the steel wouldn't hold its edge long, it was probably of reasonable quality. High quality steel was made long before Huntsman, but the processes tended to be secret and expensive. The very early razors, like the one in the painting, would have been items for the extraordinarily wealthy.

Originally Posted by fmlondon

From when is the painting?

1667 give or take a year.

So, is this a modern steel straight razor? Again, I know so little of the history. I have some iron razors, which look like miniature hatchets.

Originally Posted by fmlondon

So, is this a modern steel straight razor? Again, I know so little of the history. I have some iron razors, which look like miniature hatchets.

Well, no. Modern steel is considerably different from Huntsman's steel, which was different from the earlier steels used in razors.

If this is the sort of razor you're talking about as an iron razor:



Despite appearing in a collectors encyclopedia or Revolutionary War items, they're imported from China in bulk. Whether they're actually old or not is an open question, but they are not what they're regularly sold as.

Ah, there's another part of your original question that I missed. You asked about early razor manufacturing in the 18th century.

This book is an excellent source of information on the subject. (But it's a long, slow read through dry, dry text)

France and England produced the most cutlery in the 18th century. During that period, the Solingen cutlery guilds were dying out under tremendous pressure from the mercantile class and wouldn't really stage a comeback until the early days of automation, in the late 1850's and early 1860's.

French production was spread around through many areas, and done very much as a cottage industry, but with a huge number of cottages. English production was centered around London (which was fading by 1700), Birmingham and Sheffield.

It's also useful to know that the great majority of the steel that was used throughout Europe came from Sweden. It was usually refined locally, but the raw ore came from (nearly exclusively!) Dannemora mine. Some was imported from India, a little from America and a little from Russia. There was one point in the mid 1800's when Germany imported Swedish ore refined in Sheffield!

But in the early 1700's, the cutlery trade was dominated by the guild system, and the guild mandated the number of apprentices any master could take.

A typical Sheffield cutler's hut was a small stone building with paper windows, closed to the outdoors, possibly with a wheel powered by a stream.

It was brutal work. From the initial forging which had men hoisting 90 pounds of molten steel out of a furnace in the floor, their watered leather steaming in the heat, to the constant grinding, there were a lot of ways to die young.

By the later 1700's, more factory process came into play and masters hired teams of men to work in larger workshops or 'wheels' (at least that's what the English called them). Documentation from that far back is scanty, but the Cutler's Company of Hallamshire (the Sheffield guild) kept a lot of records that were assembled into an enormous doorstop in the early 1900's. Here in the second volume, you can find lists of many of the early cutlers.

Starting around 1787, you can start finding information in trade directories like Gales & Martin.

As a general rule of thumb, for much of the 1700's, the French made better razors than anyone else.

Unfortunately, this is a pretty incomplete picture because I've had to piece it together from sources like Lloyd's history. I'm certain there was production in Spain -- I've seen pictures of beautiful 18th century Spanish razors -- but he makes no mention of it. I know that Chinese barbers used Spanish razors in the barbershops of Mexico City in 1635, but I know almost nothing about those razors. The Spanish administrators of the city even passed laws limiting the number of razors Chinese barbers could own because they were out-competing the Spanish barbers (it didn't help).

I know nothing about the history of razors in Russia, or China or Japan, but I'm certain they were made in there.

There's an incredible amount of terra incognita in the history of razors, and a lot of stories that sound great but probably contain little truth. Museums get these details wrong. History books, compendiums, experts, and especially people like me make mistakes or latch onto a detail that turns out to be wrong.

For a long time, the co-founder of Wade & Butcher was assumed to be an American because one early source described him as an American businessman, it turns out that instead he was a businessman who worked in America, but was most definitely born in Sheffield.

Thank you for that very comprehensive answer. I guess my primary question would be, when was the modern straight razor invented? Was it in the 17th century or the 18th century? From the little I read, Huntsman's steel was the first steel used, but it seems as though I am mistaken. When I said "modern steel," that is what I meant. Was that Dutch razor steel?

Thank you again!