Description
NO RETURN & NO EXCHANGE ON THIS ITEM
The USFWS is *extremely* difficult to deal with here in the 2020s, so the policy at this shop is that you can return anything you wish as long as it is not hair scissors (if you’re in the biz, you know what’s goin’ on!) or things governed (= restricted, stopped at customs) by the USFWS.
Given the USFW headaches which you cannot possibly imagine, I’ve only kept their permit because of exotic straight razor handles like this one; you-know-where’s all but killed off the market of European shaving brushes, so we’ll likely still import those because they can ride along with parcels of much larger value, but the days of being able to import inexpensive and not-from-you-know-where badger shaving brushes are deceased…USFWS puts such tight restriction on both the quantity (24 units of dead animals among the restricted species, badger being one) and the value (max $5000 in the parcel) of items, and assigns fees bases so high (after UPS/FedEx/DHL get their cut, ~$250-300 of bs just for the right to move that box), that overhead of USFWS-and-shipping-company-related accounting creativity per unit of inventory is too high to hide to you within the retail costs. That’s why you now see so few European budget-minded shaving brushes from sale anywhere, it is either you-know-where manufacturing, or $$$$ brushes where those high overheads can be hidden in the high price, and nothing in between!
In every case of these types of USFWS-governed items, we’ll sell the item with individual pictures of stock; you get exactly the item you choose. If you have any further questions about an item you’re “considering”, contact us, we’ll make a video, stand on our head…whatever you want us to do to clarify better looks at the inventory, as if you were in our office. But no refunds for the USFWS-*restricted* items; it just isn’t fair for someone to return this for simple buyer’s remorse given their now extreme exclusivity because of the outrageous USFWS muscle-flexing (note you see no other vendors in North America offering these items!)
“Handmade in France”
Made by hand (and uniquely so), the Thiers-Issard brand is, in this one opinion, the most hollow ground and flexible razor left in production today. They’ve produced straight razors for nearly 100 years in Thiers, France, with traditional methods confined to this most special of nations, such as lead tempering and the use of a single forging die and multiple hammer/reheat/hammer cycles versus the quicker method employed elsewhere where a progressive series of forging dies are used in sequence with just one heating cycle.
As special as anything we could acquire today, given the tremendous scarcity of the handle material, this Thiers-Issard ‘Spartacus’ variant has a hand-filed spine, a gold-gilded back, and a handle made, in part, from genuine mother-of-pearl. This business has been in operation now over fourteen years, and this is the first time during that period where we could acquire new-make handles of actual MOP. There is a liner layer present to protect the delicate shells, but the shells’ part is better than 2mm thick, on a total scale thickness of ~3.3mm…2-2.3mm was ultimately judged just a bit too thin to be safe without a liner. They’re stunning. Together with the liners, these razors come in at a hefty seventy-two grams each weight, and they’re nearly as big as a 7/8″ TI. If you have large strong hands you’ll love it.
In the late 1990s and in to the 2000s, the commercial use of cutlery handles in MOP from the one region where they are commercially farmed for this purpose were ‘over fished’, leading to plenty of shell stock, but all of it small. You’d need four or five pieces left to right to make one side of a razor. It takes the species generations and being left alone to grow to lengthen their average span. So, the country that controls this commercial trade for the EU’s cutlers parked the production, it was still available in smaller quantities for things like cufflinks or little pocket knives or other smaller objects, but not for knife or razor handles of substantial length. Now, here we are.
You can see from the stock here that, indeed, rare is any panel without 2+ shells at a time per side, but their ability to make those seams aesthetically pleasing is, well, remarkable. To make it easier to move these things through the world, TI’s done a bit of careful order-of-wording on the packaging and invoicing, which says …’MOTHER OF PEARL RESIN IMITATION…’ just like that, but rest assured, the scale has pinctada maxima along the outer 2+mm with a resin lining (meant to, wink wink, imitate a mother of pearl!)
I wouldn’t be crazy enough to dare to try and import this thing w/o a USFW permit because you WILL get busted, no matter how cutesy they were with their wording (which I thank them for doing anyway, #blessthefrench), but the biggest “tell” they never thought about would be, why the heck would anyone go to the trouble of using a resin liner behind a fake shell? It would be cooler if they were no-liner, no-seam, no glazing, but MOP is fragile stuff, and the uncompromising beauty of the material and its special iridescence is still here.
Parlaying the extreme demand for such a special thing, Thiers-Issard isn’t going to let you buy these handles on something cheaper like a “Le Grelot” or “Evide Sonnant Extra”; it will be cordoned off in the VIP lounge, and thus herewith we have a gold-themed ‘Spartacus’ trademark with matching gold gilding on the spine, which has been hand filed in the “motif feston long” physical pattern. (“275” = both sides matte, “889” = one side brightly polished, “188” = both sides brightly polished). File jimps – those little ridges provided for an enhanced grip – are present upon the tang.
“Shave Ready”?
If you elect for the factory edge (= do nothing, no note needed @ checkout), you’ll receive your razor exactly as its manufacturers intended…pretty simple!
If you elect for The Superior Shave to further hone your razor [plz add “note to vendor” @ checkout], your razor will be delivered to you Guaranteed Shave Ready! The Superior Shave hones via a method best coined (by the old Thiers-Issard director) as “the opposite of tape“, where the hones’ shapes cater to performance and little else; you begin with your coarsest stone that’s shaped as the smallest imaginary wheel, and you progress to finer abrasives shaped like larger wheels, thus honing from the spine toward the actual edge, leaving a *thin*, concave edge first and foremost.
The convex honing methods were used at Thiers-Issard for many years (they’re the ones that told me about it in the first place ~2010), though [as you can see in the video at top] today as the natural stone convex wheels once used are now commercially deceased, they use 5 pairs of ~flat discs to establish a cutting edge which is then ultimately refined with a dual-grit pasted strop. While I’ve tremendous respect for Thiers-Issard’s method and believe many people will love its shave straight out of the box, if you don’t mind more visual queues of honing, for my own face I prefer the concaved edge, and thus that is how I hone your razor when requested. If a commercial wheel fine and slow enough to establish a concaved bevel still existed, I believe they’d probably still use one.
There is no wrong or right choice for factory edge/further honed, but please do not believe all factory edges are never ‘Shave Ready’, that is an absurd yet common belief. Their intention is certainly for you to only need to strop the new razor (after wiping off the factory oil) prior to shaving to receive a terrific shave. Thanks for reading this, and happy shaving!
