Category Archives: History

King of them all – things we can learn from old advertisement

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King of them all! …well, possible ahead of the pack early last century at least.

An advertisement from 2 September 1905 that I stumbled over at Wikimedia that peeked my interest.

While I do doubt the claim of 20-40 shaves per blade, it could be that the thicker carbon-steel blades kept their edges longer than the thinner stainless steel blades we use in this day and age. Or might people have coaxed that many shaves out of them due to the cost of replacement, much like many people today pushes as many shaves as they can out of cartridges before shelling out for new ones?

Taking inflation into account, the set of a razor with a dozen blades would set you back 146$ today – a not insignificant investment. A replacement pack of twelve blades would cost just shy of 30$… which is definitely in the same league as replacement cartridges today. If I paid 2.50$ per blade, I would try to coax a month of shaves out of it too.

In a way it makes sense that Gillette would charge as much for blades back then as they do for carts today. The safety razor wasn’t about liberating men from the tyranny of the barbershop, or helping the working stiff save money… it was about creating a market with vendor lock in and a steady revenue stream. People invest in a razor, and will return year after year to buy blades… and as long as you control the patents, you have in effect a walled garden. Other manufacturers can’t step in to offer compatible blades cheaper without infringing on your patent, and the users can’t get out without giving up on the money they have invested so far (the sunk cost fallacy).

Shaving with an old fashioned safety razor might save you money compared to the alternatives today, but when the old fashioned was the cutting edge, you paid to be part of the first adopters.

…certain new and useful Improvements in Safety-Razors – what might have been

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In 1907 William H Crichton-Clarke – most likely working for Gillette – patented what he described as a useful improvement in safety razors… in particular an improvement to simplify and reduce the number of parts in the razor.

Before looking at the patent it is worth remembering that the Gillette Old Type we know and love is made out of at least five pieces:

  • The top cap, with two pins and a threaded stud
  • The base plate, with three holes
  • The “nut”, which forms the top of the handle
  • A tube that forms the handle
  • The ball that forms the end of the handle.

The last three pieces is permanently joined together into one unit. If the only objective was to reduce the number of parts the handle could have been machined out from a single piece. However this approach would make a heavier razor which used more metal to make, thus likely making it more expensive to manufacture and ship.

William choose a different route, creating a razor which would retain the hollow handle and reduce the number of parts by… hmm.. one.

Click to make bigger – it’s worth a close look

Instead of having a threaded stud on the top cap that threaded into the handle, the top cap now have the female end of the thread, and is screwed onto the threaded end of the handle. The base plate is secured to the end of the handle by means of a collar, which in turn is held in place by a couple of tiny bolts or pins.

In the words of William himself:

A razor comprising a cap having a threaded opening, a guard, and a handle rotatably swivelled on the guard and having an enlarged threaded extension at its upper end projecting above the guard and adapted to engage the threaded opening of the cap, and means for preventing axial movement of the handle relative to the guard

One major benefit I can see from a manufacturing perspective is the fact that you no longer have to fit together three separate pieces to make the handle. The machining should also be a bit more straight forward.

The major downside I can see is visible in the lower left corner of the drawing; The blades would have to change. And while the ‘new’ blade – with the enlarged centre hole – might work on the old razors, the old style blade would not fit in this improved and simplified safety razor. And that is probably what killed this project when all is said and done.

Old soldiers never die

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My Gillette Old Type from my vintage Khaki Kit still gives great shaves a hundred and one year after he was born – try that with a cartridge razor…

How things change

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From “Shaving Made Easy”, a book printed in 1905:

THE SAFETY RAZOR.
Of recent years a great number of safety razors have been invented and placed on the market, the manufacturers of each claiming that theirs are superior to all others and that they have at last produced a razor that is destined to revolutionize shaving.
One thing may be said of safety razors in general—that if a man uses one he is less likely to cut himself, but this is all that can reasonably be said in their favor. Of course, if it were impossible to shave with the ordinary razor without cutting one’s self, then the safety razor would become a necessity. The truth is, however, that anyone who has a good keen smooth-cutting razor, lathers the face thoroughly, and will learn—if he does not already know—how to handle the razor properly, will run almost no danger. Such a man will seldom cut himself.
On the other hand, most of the safety razors are difficult to keep clean and dry, and therefore free from rust; and owing to the difficulty of stropping them, it is almost, if not quite impossible to keep them sharp. It is also difficult to make the correct stroke with them. Probably a hundred thousand safety razors have been sold in the United States within the past few years and it is extremely doubtful if ten per cent. of them are now in use.

The Gillette Safety Razor with disposable blades were first marketed in 1903, and made stropping of blades obsolete in safety razors. The rest is – as they say – history.

VIntage commercial

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Did y’all really have to travel to the dessert to shoot that advertisement?

The most adorable DE: Laurel Ladies Boudoir Razor, with known provenance

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My beloved wife seems to think that miniature versions of things are cute and adorable. With that in mind, the Laurel Ladies Boudoir Razor must be the most adorable DE ever.

Waits – in his excellent Razor Compendium – have the following to say about this razor:

Laurel Ladies Boudoir Razor
George H Lawrence, Limited, Sheffield, England. Small “Ladies Boudoir” double-edged safety razor and special blades in metal lithographed tins and plastics cases.

The razor itself is indeed small – as can be seen from the photos – and the blades are downright tine. The design seems to be a scaled down version of the Laurel “Dumb Bell” Razor from 1934, which sort of gives a lower end to when the Ladies Boudoir was manufactured. There is some indications online that the Ladies Boudoir was meant as an cosmetic razor, ie.: for trimming eyebrows and removing unsightly hairs, rather than for shaving armpits and the like.

My Ladies Boudoir came to me via a friend of the family, after he died several years ago – the same source as my EverReady 1914.
According to what I know, he picked it up in England during the War (World War Two, that is) and carried it in his pocket when he parachuted into Nazi occupied Norway as a commando/resistance fighter/saboteur – what we today would likely identify as a Special Forces Operator. The idea behind bringing it was that if he got separated from his equipment – which was dropped in a separate container – he would be able to make his way to a civilised area, and give himself a shave before contacting anyone so he wouldn’t immediately give himself away as one of  the “boys in the forest” (a commonly used term for the Norwegian Resistance).
As luck would have it, he didn’t get away from his gear and the other resistance fighters was on the agreed upon meeting spot, so the razor sat unused in his pocket until the end of the war, and then among his mementos until it made it’s way to me.

As can be seen from the photos, the blade – and thus the razor’s head – is about ¼ of the size of a “real” DE razor. The handle is equally diminutive, and feels too thin to control in my hands at least. A nimble lady – or a WW2 Norwegian Commando whom on occasion disguised himself as a young teen – might find it easier to use than I would. My calipers gives the total length of the assembled razor as 38.3mm (1.5″), while the head measures 21.6mm by 12.8mm (0.85″ by 0.52″) – so either you go by looks of by the numbers, this is a tiny razor.
The Ladies Boudoir is of all metal construction; some online sources suggest that the base cap should be made of plastic or Bakelite, but from the wear and tear it’s plain that the one I inherited at least have a metal base with a black coating.
While it’s not my oldest razor, nor a razor I’ll ever actually use, the Laurel Ladies Boudoir is one of the last razors I own that I’ll ever give up. The history and provenance of it makes it beyond priceless to me.

An upcoming project

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A little while ago I got my hands on a trio of razor blade sharpeners, and my plan is to do a light clean and restore before making a few tests to see if they still work as advertised… stay tuned!

Bessegg razor – made in Norway during the War

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A lot of Norwegian Museums is part of what they call “The Digital Museum”, where you can search and browse the collections without having to actually go to a museum you didn’t even know existed in the first place.

As – for instance – the museum at Tana, located in one of the few buildings in Finnmark that wasn’t burn down by the retreating Nazis in 1944… I had never ever heard about the place until I was poking around trying to find more images of Norwegian razor blades and found this instead:
Click to make bigger – it’s worth a closer look.
It’s an advertisement for a razor manufactured in Norway! While I cannot make out any date printed on it, it’s most likely from the War. The text translates as:
On top:

The first Norwegian!

In the little box to the right of the drawing:

A new (torn word – perhaps ‘product’?)
The Besegg razor have a smooth protecting edge instead of the normal teeth.
The protective edge provides a perfectly efficient safety.

Under the drawing:

BESEGG RAZOR
A BETTER SHAVE

Left side of the table:

ADVANTAGES
1. Better, easier, more comfortable shaves
2. Greater safety
3. Easier cleaning
4. Solid, exact and beautiful construction
5. Made in Norway

Right side of the table:

PRICES
Sports model – 5 kroner
Standard model – 6 kroner
Gift model #1 – 10 kroner
Gift model #2 – 12 kroner
For the normal style of razor blades

Bottom:

THE RAZOR WITHOUT TEETH

The very small print:

Printed at Fabritius, Oslo / Besegg Manufacture Inc., Oslo

I’m fairly convinced the actual razor was a knock off or a near copy of a foreign design, or a chimera of different design elements from foreign razors.

5 kroner back in ’44 would be the equivalent of about 112 kroner today, or about 13.25 USD. However; the average yearly income was – according to my sources – 4260 kroner, so the cheapest model would cost 0.12% of your yearly income… not a small amount when you do the math.

Sidebar / fun factoid: Fabritius was a long established printer in Oslo, operating from 1844 to 1991.

“Why don’t she shave” – body shaming to sell hair removal

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Over the years companies and individuals have used many underhanded tricks so sell stuff, but one that really gets my goat is body shaming… preying on the insecurities of people to separate them from their money. This is one of the worst examples – from the 30’s – I’ve come across in a while, but the whole modern concept of ladies shaving started out as body shaming to sell razors (and blades) to the ‘other half” of the population…

I would have liked if we – as a society – had outgrown these kinds of underhanded tricks from advertisers, but you only have to look around to realise that it’s worse than ever these days.

Norway’s oldest soap factory – another bit of history

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So I was poking around on the internet again, and stumbled over a reference to “Balder Barbersåpe” – ie: the shaving soap of the Norse god of light, joy, purity and the summer sun, son of Odin (Wotan) and Frigg (Frige) – and off course I had to dig more.

So spooling back to 1858, a 19 year old boy travelled from Kristiansand (south coast of Norway) to Schleswig (then southern Denmark, now northern Germany and further on to Neuwild by the Rhine before wrapping up in Holland.. his mission? Learn to make soap!

Returning to his home town in 1859, the now 20 year old young man started his own factory for making soap and candles – the first dedicated soap factory in Norway -and named it Walhalla (as the spelling was at the tme)

As for the selection of goods, it was fairly diverse; candles made from tallow and wax, colognes, hair oils, some incense, so called “green soap” (a soft soap made from potash and fats) and – most interesting for us – shaving soap.

“Balder – the soap is mild and clean and free of all harsh chemicals. It’s long lasting and cheap to use.”
Calling your shaving soap for Balder makes a lot of sense when your factory is Valhalla. The package in the image is from the 30’s, as can be guessed from the art and colour scheme.

As for when the factory closed / was sold / changed names I don’t know.. last solid reference I got from a quick search is from 1953, when the factory was almost a century old. There is a current company with the same name in Norway, but it’s only a couple of years old and don’t make soaps at all.