The desire to improve and enhance upon things must be as old as the drive to invent in the first place, and the brush that Mr Marcus B Berhman filed a patent for in 1919 is in fact a useful improvement on the classic brush – if only for travel purposes.

…a lather brush compromising a handle and bristles, the knot of the bristles being held by suitable inner and outer ferrules and the bristles being adapted to be concealed within the handle of the brush or exposed outwardly therefrom for use, said handle being in hinged together sections adapted to be opened outwardly to receive the bristles or to permit the same to be removed from the handle, and said outer ferrule being adapted to lock the handle in closed position, both when the bristles are within the handle and when said bristles are in exposed condition.

Makes me dizzy just to read all that.. but the long and the short is that the handle is hollow, hinged, and shaped to hold the knot when in the stowed position. Luckily the drawing that accompanies the patent is clearer than the text when it comes to explaining things.

Looks like a handy travel brush, and one I wouldn’t mind having. I do like the fact that when folded it takes half the space, meaning you can more easily fit a full sized brush in your dopp bag. While the original idea likely was to make it out of stamped sheet metal, there is no reason why a modern recreation of this idea can’t use different materials that stands up to the damp a bit better.