Description
This Osma silvertip shaving brush is made by hand in Germany by a company you won’t know from the public facing side of things, but whom specialize in knots/brushes exclusively for OEM applications; in other words, the items that this company makes never say their name on them, only the name of their client, which in this case is Osma.
Upon seeing this new SKU on the pricelist a few months ago, I’d kind of hoped Osma would’ve used the French company that made the knot in my brush from their original shaving set of ~14yrs ago…which is French, and while not what you would rightly call high quality [mine sheds 1+ hair strands with each use, likely forever], is certainly the oddest specimen of badger fur I’ve taken to beard, in both knot canopy design and hair stock itself. That thing’s a pyramid shape of light pale grey colored and somewhat prickly hair, and I respect it, even like it, just for being so weird…but a premium item, it is not. My landlord at this office building’s a native German, and once he brought back with him a bottle of German single malt, knowing me to be the Scotchaholic I am. Well, it wasn’t the world’s greatest malt whisky/whiskey, but it was certainly one of the strangest! I have some fond remembrances of its hoppy malty thing, and good luck to them in their continued work, should I find myself in-country again I’d certainly fetch a bottle of it only because we don’t have anything remotely similar here.
This knot, OTOH, is undoubtedly of the extreme mgfr tolerances to which these nameless Germans are known, and is a silvertip badger. Set in to the ~37.6×52.2mm resin handle by hand here, which is nice because it makes the bottom 1/3rd of the knot move around more naturally. The handle, while pretty nice quality, looks to be injection-molded, not lathed. So, it is a cast handle, if a decently-impressive one. Total weight’s about fifty-four grams. Cute Osma embossing.
I wish I could tell you who makes the knots. But it is a German company that doesn’t like their name toward the end users, even though they’re very very old…our “house brand” company acts the same way, so maybe it is a German thing? *Maybe* if you search up on a site used in Germany for seeing who can stock in a particular industry and request shaving brushes and ignore retailers and manufacturer names you do know, it might be possible that names remaining include these quiet people. Anyways, that company can and has used in the past badger fur raised from the EU [there is still a thing, but it is a pittance of the production #s of China]. Knowing Osma as I do, I would wager well that that’s what they used here…but because the declarations inside the parcel’s paperwork didn’t state it, I can’t say definitively where the fur comes from, only that it is silvertip badger properly sterilized and made in to a knot in Germany.
The knot certainly reminds me precisely of the three band silvertip hair that looked more natural which we bought from a deceased Italian company [Il Ceppo] in the mid-10s, in fact it looks exactly the same [though those were +2mm diameter], and the canopy style looks like it, too…and as I can confirm that the knot producer is one and the same, I’ll wager firmly the same “hair farm” provided the fur to these brushmakers. But the paperwork only says quality grade and specifics of steam sterilization and irradiation. Dammit, I just realized that that silvertip brush with Palisander was one of the ones that I lost in the darn house fire! I should have tried to wash all of those knots, I’m not a German Shepherd and in due time this below average olfactory would not know of the smoke surely still present. You can have way too many brushes and still miss ones you lost.
My Palisander unit had a ~24.5-25mm knot which was a perfect German bulb and I can tell you honestly that in ~10yrs of ownership and ~15x sessions a year that I did not see that knot lose a single strand of hair even once, which means they were really good about cleaning up the knot and brushing it out after setting it, as well as being good at setting it.
As I can see from the old Il Ceppo invoice we had originally bought 30x of those Palisander and Wenge brushes in total and I’d taken one, which means twenty-nine of you are out there with one of those brushes, and I’m sure if you loved that brush you’ll very much like this one.
