I’ve discussed various self loading brushes before. But all of them, including the one from 1849 as well as the Brush Plus from the eighties, used soap that was either liquid or semi-liquid. Woodburry P Lefavour’s shaving brush patent from 1890 is the first I’ve seen that used a solid soap.
Inventions are – when all is said and done – solutions to a problem or an improvement to the state of the art. Lefavour claimed that his brush was a new and useful improvement to the humble shaving brush.
Sometimes people files patent applications with the best of intentions, but at the same time a lack of understanding as to what the prior art is. One I recently found was Kevin Monte de Ramos’ Shaving Stick. The application was in 2005, and abaondoned a couple of years later.
Most patents seems to be focused on solving a problem. And the problem Kevin sought to fix, was that you would have to use your hand to apply lather. Or in his own words:
Shaving aids available in the market today come in three primary forms: (a) soaps whipped into a lather and then applied to the face using a brush, (b) creams/gels/lotions dispensed from the container into the hand and then spread across the area to be shaved, or as a (c) liquid astringent splashed onto the body. The use of these shaving aids have a single unifying inconvenience: each requires an intermediary tool to apply the shaving aid onto the skin; namely the user’s hand. Additionally, shaving creams/gels/lotions accumulate to hide the hairs to be shaved. As such, it is often necessary to manually remove excess lubricant before passing the blade near critical hair lines; a man’s sideburn and mustache or a women’s bikini line. Another inconvenience is that shaving kits, cans of shaving cream, and bottles of shaving astringents take up limited space in our travel bags.
From US patent application US11/306,176
For starters, I wouldn’t say that having to use my hand to wield a brush is an inconvenience. But, for the sake of the argument, let’s pretend that it is.
Kevin goes on to describe how he got the idea for his invention while out shopping, wondering why shaving aids didn’t come in a deodorant container. So he went home and tried, and applied for a patent for the idea.
Drawing from From US patent application US11/306,176
Can I just say that Kevin produced an oddly endearing drawing to go with his application?
According to the application, 1a is ‘applicator assembly body’ – i.e.: a deodorant tube. 1b is the lid for the tube, and 1c is the turn knob. 2 is the actual shaving soap, while 3 is the whole assembly. The whole thing is not exactly an un-intuitive step from someone used to deodorants and shaving soaps.
I can think of a couple of reasons why Kevin choose to abandon his patent application. Aside from the money needed to file a full patent, that is.. One is the fact that you would still be inconvenienced by using your hands to apply the shaving stick to your face. Unless, that is, you balances the shaving stick on your vanity and then bend down to rub your face over it.
The other reason is that a shaving stick in a convenient container isn’t a new idea by far. A hundred years ago – eighty years before Kevin filed the application for his shaving stick – you could get such things as Colgate’s Handy-Grip and Safetee in a tin. In short, there was prior art, and probably a lot of it too.
These days, advertisement posters and signs are cheap, cheerful, and on paper. Here today, gone tomorrow. Use and discard. Back in the days however, signs promoting wares could be more durable. Meant to last a long time.
Mondays used to be a lot worse, in the days before I discovered traditional wetshaving. Now I have something to look forward to as I drag myself out of bed…
The Great War – which gave us such things as the ComfyKit,1 the smooth shaven soldier, and body shaming the ladies – ended in November 1918. Interestingly enough, that almost immediately prompted a change in how razors were marketed. As an example, I have two advertisements for the GEM khaki kit for you today. One from 1918, and one from 1919.
Another week, another shave. Both the brush and the lather are Limited Edition items made for the sadly defunct Shave Nook forum, and the Mergress was a gift from Phil who ran the Nook.
