The brush is one of the Maggard synthetics, this one with a 22mm knot, the size I like. It’s $12, and I was thinking of how rapidly cultural items can evolve. Just over the past couple of decades shaving brushes with synthetic knots have come from nowhere to the point where one might well prefer them to silvertip badger based purely on feel and efficiency (not to mention cost). They got better fast—if you look only at these past couple of decades. If you look at the past 300 years, of course, they really didn’t amount to much until just very recently, but of course the same is true of humans in terms of animal evolution: go back 200 million years and the parade of evolution, so far as we are concerned, did not show much in the way of humans, but then in the past few hundred thousand years we’ve overrun the planet. And the same is true of memes, our cultural creations. For a million years or so, we just worked with a rocks, and for much of that time with rocks we found. Then we learned to shape rocks, and gradually the pace of innovation increased (greatly assisted by the development of language, a great cultural creation).
At any rate, synthetic brushes are now really fine, and the lather this one worked up from Van Yulay’s After Dark was quite wonderful. I started with a damp brush and three times I added a little water, gradually loading the brush fully. This is a fragrance I like (“Cinnamon, leather, cypress, sandalwood, tonka bean, amber, patchouli, lavender, mandarin orange, musk, benzoin, vanilla, apple, cedar, and bergamot”), and as is typical with Van Yulay shaving soaps, the ingredients are interesting:
Stearic Acid, Aloe Vera, Coconut Fatty Acid, Castor, Glycerin, Potassium Hydroxide, Coconut-Emu-Babassu-Olive-Argan-Jojoba-Oils, Calendula, Extracts, Poly Quats, Sodium Lactate, Allantoin, Silica, Liquid Silk, Bentonite Clay, Essential Oils, and Fragrance.
Three passes with Fine’s Marvel razor, the head here mounted on a UFO handle, left my face totally smooth and undamaged, and then a splash of After Dark aftershave finished the job. I am ready for the weekend.