Shaving brush Sophist badger hair

It takes a shaving brush with fine badger hair tips to produce fine pored, creamy lather for a skin-friendly shave. The best brushes are made from silver tip badger hair, plucked from the white silver tip badger. It is decidedly finer, softer and more flexible than grey badger hair. The conically tapering hairs can absorb lots of water and generate especially thick and creamy lather – with a good soap. The three-colour pattern is typical for the high quality of fine silver tip hair: light underneath, dark, almost black in the middle and lighter toward the tips. The clearer the pattern appears in the brush and the dark middle section of the hair shaft, the mirror, so to speak, the more carefully were the hairs harvested (they are in fact plucked) and processed – both by hand. The hairs are inserted upside down in a vibrator bowl and shaken and vibrated until the desired contour emerges. To protect the fine hairs, the brush is not mechanically finished: In the last step, the brush maker removes stray hairs, which are hardly visible to the untrained eye. With the appropriate use and care (softly lathering the skin, thoroughly rinsing the soap from the bristles with warm water and hanging the shaving brush to dry) a badger hair shaving brush will last ten years.

While not every craft business succeeds in balancing tradition and modernity, the Mühle shaving brush manufactory does: The still family-run company has preserved the traditional knowledge of the craft while welcoming new materials, manufacturing methods and contemporary designs. The manufactory in the Ore Mountains produces articles, 90% handmade, for wet shaving. The heart of the company is up to the present day the manufacturing of the shaving brush. The brush makers need a sure touch, a steady hand and a good eye to work with the fine badger hair. In the first step, they carefully sort the hair, weigh the fibres out to the tenth of a gram and then tap them into shape in a box. Then they take the 20,000 or so hairs with great care out of the moulding box and, without a single hair slipping out of place, tie them firmly into a tassel called loft. When they have finished the form of the loft, they glue and mount it on the handle of the shaving brush. They manufacture all brushes with extreme care, whether made of badger hair or special synthetic fibres; we offer both hair and fibres in a range of different qualities. Mühle produces the shaving brushes and razors in full at the company’s headquarters in Hundshübel. Parts are sourced as far as possible from the region.