This winter I started shaving like my grandfather. I liked it, but on a whim I grew out my beard in March. This past week I decided to get rid of it and bust out the safety razor and badger hair brush again. I’d definitely missed it. My face feels so much better when I use my old-school shaving setup.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a badger. It made me wonder how they are getting all this hair for shaving brushes. Is there a badger farm where they sheer them like sheep and then set them free again? While I’d like to believe that is the case, my curiosity got the best of me and I had to turn to the Internet.
“Because badgers are a protected species in North America[5] and most of Europe, virtually all commercial badger hair comes from mainland China, which supplies knots of hair in various grades to brush makers in both China and Europe. In rural Northern China, badgers multiply to the point of becoming a crop nuisance…”
Turns out, like most everything else we use, the brushes come from China. I wish I had a picture of the cute little weasel that made my shaving brush possible. For now I’m going to pretend it is Friar Tuck from Disney’s Robin Hood (1973). He was old anyway so he probably died from natural causes.