Collectable Shaving Items With Provenance

Thanks for thinking of me Kav! I do have some (what I find interesting) pieces, but the history is lost to me...aside from my grandads Aristocrat, but that's just an heirloom. Matt however has more than a few in his collection with some great stories attached!

I have a couple of razors that belonged to my 88 year old father - a 1952 Aristocrat and a Gillette Tech.  I know he's not famous but these are the only vintage razors I have of which I know the provenance.  

I had the Aristocrat replated in the original gold by Chris at RazorPlate - he did a great job.  I know I've posted on this before but that was prior to KAV  and possibly CaD314 coming on board.  There are before and after pictures below - the biggest surprise to me was the awful condition my dad had allowed the razor to get in to.  I'd always thought he was a careful man but I guess it was a tool to him and given the condition of the case, he'd put the thing away wet on more than one occasion.  

The Aristocrat was given to my dad by the President of the Anglo-Canadian Wire Rope Company some time in the mid 50s.  My dad was a chartered accountant and his firm, Price Waterhouse was doing the audit at the company.  The president had a stack of these Aristocrats in his desk in embossed cases and he gave them to people he liked or who he otherwise thought needed a shave.  I think my dad may have fallen into both of these categories - he always had a 5 o'clock shadow.  If you look really closely at the second picture of the case you can see a faint gold embossing of the company name

DOC, the late writer Edward Abbey ( HAYDUKE LIVES!) bought a huge 60s Cadillac convertible in white and then grumbled about how poorly it was made as he trashed it on desert trails. It was sold at auction some years past and bought by a female fan. She found several used pencils in the glove compartment and recouped most of her investment selling the damn things to starry eyed fans convinced he wrote Desert Solitaire with them.

I find it interesting the fascination people have with inanimate objects that may (or may not) have been used by a notable historical figure or a celebrity. There used to be a brisk trade in pieces of rope allegedly used in recent hangings of notorious criminals. I'll bet if you collected all the pieces of rope you'd get several times the length of the actual rope. You can buy pieces of the court from championship NCAA basketball games or swatches of "game worn" jerseys autographed by the wearer.
The car Bonnie and Clyde were killed in - they apparently were talented in death as one of those cars toured with every circus and traveling amusement carnivals for decades. Perhaps it brings us closer to greatness in our minds if we can touch the things that greatness touched.

There used to be a eclectic shop down Desoto, the road IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT was filmed on when it was still oiled dirt. Lady was a friend of Dale Evans ( wife of Roy Rogers for the younger members) and would get all manner of props from the studios. I caught hell for spending my summer money on a chariot I pulled all the way up the street in traffic. 3 days later a man showed up wanting to buy it. He was the trainer who's family did all the roman riding in the movies and my chariot was the one built for Charlton Heston in Ben Hur. I saw my opportunity and tried to negotiate lessons instead of cash. Mom is yelling about my getting killed standing on two galloping horses jumping walls and my investment of $10 added another zero- which I never saw.
Perhaps most poignant were dozens of raw billets of exotic woods in gramp's garage rafters. He was friends with William Bendix who was a master woodworker and they would do intricate inlays for custom homes. My grandmother got upset when he came over; wouldn't let him in the house and I caught hell for talking to him alone. I later learned 'uncle' Bill ( I had a lot of famous uncles back then) was a very tortured gay man who never came to terms with it. When he passed a flatbed truck delivered a massive load of exotic woods from his lifelong collection. They also burned in the great Chatsworth fire. both men had a tiny 'signature' to their work. Gramps would lay a tiny tile upside down in an obscure spot or a inlay with the grain running wrong. Uncle Bill would make tiny double B inlays of incredible delicacy.
One estate later was bought by a contemporary actor I l knew through the horses and my survival job at Home Despot. I told him about it and a few weeks later he came in all excited. He was restoring some paneling painted over by a previous owner and found a tiny BB and a maid's bathroom had a vintage tile of violets and one down behind the lou was upside down.

Shame about the wood burning. Some of those pieces likely can't be found anymore as the trees they came from are all gone. Thats a lesson on saving the "best" whatever (bottle of wine, piece of wood, exotic badger brush) for just the right moment and finding that the moment never comes along and we pass on without having experienced the joy of using the object or the wine turns. I'm not saying use exotic wood for mundane projects but I'm saying is don't wait, use it now, create the project, use that brush, open that wine and sip it with your special someone watching the sunset. Special moments are made intentionally and they don't just come along on their own. I think its cool that those two craftsmen left their special mark discreetly on their work. Their way of saying I was here if even ever so briefly until their work is consumed by fire or the sands of time....

I have a Crown & Sword 1720 5/8 extra hollow that a friend of mine recently gave me. It belonged to his great grandfather, was passed to his grandfather and father, and eventually to him. He used it to cut saxophone reeds, but being extra hollow, it flexed too much to be really useful, so when he gave me the Crown & Sword, I returned the favor with a 4/8 quarter hollow that I honed up for him, and which flexes very little, if at all, under the pressure of cutting saxophone reeds.

That's it. I don't know anything about the progression, use, or life of the razor from original purchase through my friend handing it to me, but I feel pretty honored to have been entrusted with a family heirloom. Having no real family history of my own, it's nice to have something that I know meant something more than utility for several generations.

I suppose I could presume a similar historicity for each blade in my collection, but to know it true is a different feeling...

GREAT little shaver, too, by the way. I just put a coticule edge on her and shaved the other day with fantastic results!

I love stories like this.  I have mentioned before that one of my favorite razors is an Ever-Ready 1907 lather catcher that I purchased off of eBay some years ago.  I know nothing of its history and yet I do daydream about who owned it, and where, from the person who got it new to the person who had it just before me.  The 100+ years this razor has been around has known more history than I ever will.  I can only hope that once it's time for the razor to move on it will be owned by someone who will care for it, use it, and be as curious about its history as I.

The only shaving items with provenance are gear that I will never have, the tools my father used. (d. 1986, 58 years old) Sadly, I have no idea what he used and that pains me to no end.

The only shaving items with provenance are gear that I will never have, the tools my father used. (d. 1986, 58 years old) Sadly, I have no idea what he used and that pains me to no end.  

Primo, thats too bad that you didn't know this nor were you able to get hold of any of his gear. I know this might sound silly but have you considered giving thought to the sort of person your father was and coming up with a a kit that he would have been likely to use? Its funny that my own father, who puts high value on "things" maybe more so than people, had a truly crappy shaving kit. I can recall from when I was a kid he had a vinyl dopp bag that contained a boar knot - no handle, that had long before come detached from the knot and likely hit the trash, just the knot that he held at the base on the plastic plug to lather from a worn bar of baby soap that he kept in the one half a plastic soap travel container. He had either a fatboy or a slim as I remember and I think it was broken in some way too. My dad was incredibly cheap when it came to things he didn't particularly care about. That being said, if I were to assemble the sort of shaving kit that my dad would have used, I'd make sure it was in tact and in good repair. I'd also ditch the baby soap. He never used aftershave of any kind. I think he suffered through a lifetime of miserable shaves.

In my avocation I was always amazed how little we know about our parent and grandparent's lives VS ancient history. I was on an excavation locally. My town used to be a major filming location and many locations in SOCAL still are. A wild flock of parrots still roam TARZANA from the days ER Burroughs lived there and people don't know who Tarzan is and claim it's a Mission Indian word ( ignorant of those people's name.) So we're doing a preliminary surface survey flagging lithic flakes and several broken projectile points thrown up by ground squirrels. A student found a concentration of 'bullets' and in great excitement had this revelation HE had discovered a battlefield between the noble native Americans and greedy Anglo goldminers and you could see the glint of a graduate paper, honors of sage incense in abalone shells at the next intertribal pow wow with a plate of free fry bread and a teaching position at the university requiring a briar pipe, Harris tweed jacket and beard ( girls love that stuff don'cha know?) We all stopped working and walked over. Three of us gave a collective sigh. ' those are 3 in 1 blanks.' Blank stares from half the crew and I explained their use in film firearms because they cycle semi automatic weapons and fit multiple chambers. 'They never filmed here! they film down at Universal Studios. I pointed to 'ladyface' a prominent feature of Thousand Oaks. Remember when the Joads drove into California and the valley ahead? that was Ladyface. 'who?' HENRY FONDA ! 'who?'