Thread: Nothing against the Barbers

I think you have to factor in that barbers of the past were far different to barbers of today. Shaving people for them was an every day occurrence, part of a thriving trade.

When my father was a boy he was indentured as an apprentice. Now, apprenticeships exist today, but the years of tradition that existed before the renaissance of apprenticeship (in the UK, at least) cannot be replaced over night. My dad was taught by masters, who themselves were taught by masters. Pay was small so time was taken. Hand-skills were taught whereas now machines are taking over. The things that people had to do are looked at with disbelief by younger generations. My father was in the engineering and then the building trade - the physical exertion that they went through everyday of the week back then would have many squawking about their human rights now. It's a different world.

Apprenticeships and proper teaching, especially in buiding, tailed off while dad was still a young man, then practically disappeared. When they came back with force in the 80s, although I had been working for many years, I enrolled for the 'proper teaching' mainly to get my certificates. When I finished the three year course I had the certificates alright, but I still knew more before I started the course thanks to the training I had received 'on the job' from old hands. Most of the others who passed with me shouldn't have been let loose with a paperclip, let alone a theodolite and a set of plans.

I'm sure romanticism colours peoples memories of bygone days, but the fact remains that shaving with a cut-throat razor was a staple part of barbering for very many years and as is the way with something like that techniques get learned that aren't written down, and the competent tradesman working in a living and widespread trade will either be worth his salt or go by-the-by. I can't see that the same circumstances prevail now - shaving people is not a dog-eat-dog business, not even a staple - it seems to me that it is little more than a not very widespread eccentricity.

Regards,
Neil.

I generally agree with Kevint. While I'm sure the average barber of days gone by was much better at shaving than today's barbers, I think we give them a little too much credit. I don't know where it’s posted, but many of us read the Mark Twain essay where he writes about the torture of being shaved by a barber...they weren't all great at what they did.

I also tend to believe that there were different standards in the past when it came to the quality of a shave - for the average man. They didn't get a barber shave every day. Maybe once or twice a week? That's a different ballgame, as far as I'm concerned, from shaving a face everyday - the way many must in this era. They were not obsessed with the perfect shave the way we are any more than the poor guy dragging a Mach 3 across his canned-goo covered face today.

If you look at the techniques used by many barbers - even the old/master ones - in videos, etc, they often do things differently from each other and differently from what the teaching manuals say. Stropping technique is an example.

I think many of them found (or adopted the methods taught by their teacher) a way to get the job done well that worked for them and stuck with it. What works well for one tradesman might be tweaked or changed to work well for another. They were also shaving other people, and I think shaving yourself is can be different.

I think barbers certainly have much to teach us, but their teachings and methods vary, and they are not the final answer when it comes to shaving or razors. I wouldn't take what a barber says as gospel. I'd listen to Lynn or other respected honemeister's advice on honing over any barber.

I'm losing my coherence, so I'll stop now.

Jordan