Phillip Krumholz'  Shaving and Barberiana

    It isn't known just when men and women took an interest in removing hair from their bodies, but we do know it has gone on since the cave man days.  There were several reasons for this early procedure.  One was to minimize the breeding grounds (on his or her person) for lice, fleas and small rodents.  Another was to eliminate the beard as a hand-hold during combat.   Early man found it nearly impossible to eat without doing some trimming, and being of a superstitious nature, man associated a heavily bearded man with old age and death - that was a man nearing the end of his life.  Somewhere along the line, vanity entered the picture, as well.

    There are crude cave drawings which show beardless men, or men with very short beards.  There are razors made of stone (with organic handles) or horn, carbon-dated from the Neolithic Period (or Late Stone Age), that have been excavated.   These early men also used crude tweezers to pluck hairs, which offered a painful solution to a less frequent shave.  Other cultures saw men singeing their whiskers (with burning twigs) as close to their faces as possible.  These methods did not leave one with a close or refreshing shave; quarter-inch long stubble was about the best one could expect.

    7000 years ago, in Egypt, men of the upper classes shaved their faces and heads.  Mastabas (tombs) dating from 4000 B.C. have yielded razors and tweezers and hieroglyphics explained their use.  The Mesopotamian of 3000 B.C. shaved with finely-chipped obsidian blades secured to slate handles, and the Sumerians in 2800 B.C. went clean-shaven as well.

    A design for a sarcophagus from Crete dating to around 2000 B.C. represents clean-shaven men, and goblets from this period show clean-shaven warriors.

    Hittite soldiers of 1230 B.C. went beardless, and about this time young Ramses II was wearing a tie-on beard on his shaved face (which must have looked pretty silly), but which was represented in the colossal stature at Luxor, Egypt.

    Around 500 B.C. a curious tweezer-like device was being used in Egypt, Greece and Sicily.  It is believed that these "bow shears" came from Messina, and could be used to great advantage to trim hair and beards short.

    In the 300's B.C. Alexander the Great exerted much influence on grooming practices all around the known world - he had, of course, conquered much of it.   Alexander went beardless, it was said, to show off his handsome profile, but he explained to his generals that no purchase could be gained on his beard by his enemies.

    In the First Century A.D., the Greek doctor and philosopher Galen, who drew a certain fame by teaching sex with live models, set down writings on barber customs and cosmetic practices.

    In the 1400s and 1500s, Englishmen went about without beards, although most men were lucky to bathe once a month.  In 1461 a charter was granted by Edward IV of England for the Guild of Barber/Surgeons.  This was in response to the need to draw men to the profession.

    A few years later, due to complaints that the surgeon side of the barber/surgeon was more skillful, Henry VIII revised the Incorporation to dictate that barbers could do no more "surgery" than bloodletting and pulling teeth.  In return, surgeons could not practice the "barbary of shaving."

    In England in the 1500's, the popular notion of hygiene was a monthly bath and a fortnightly shave.

    The 1600s saw a further erosion of beard cultivation in Europe as the periwig (wig) became more popular, and only mustaches or goatees were fashionably observed.  The Pilgrims were preoccupied with the problems of survival in America, but brought the styles of the Old World with them.  In Russia, Peter the Great detested beards so much that he taxed those who wore them.

    In the United States, people, for the next century, wore wigs and went about clean-shaven.  This era, from 1800 to 1900, is generally thought of as the Golden Era of the Straight Razor.

    The Romantic or "Beau Brummel" period began about 1815 and lasted for nearly three decades.  During this time there was a renaissance of limited facial hair.

    In the United States in the 1840s, sideburns were exaggerated into mutton chops, such as those worn by Martin Van Buren.

    In 1847, a London inventor by the name of William Henson developed a primitive hoe type guarded razor.  This razor achieved only limited success; it would be nearly thirty years before the "safety" razor came into its own, an invention of the Kampfe Brothers known as the Star.

    In 1970, the average barber worked ninety hours per week, while cutlery workers were making about $480 per year.  While the cutlery worker toiled from fifty to sixty hours per week, the barber was expected to be at his shop full time for six days of the week and then early on Sunday morning for pre church shaves.

    An enterprising young man named King Camp Gillette was racking his brain to come up with a "disposable" product with which to make his fortune.   It is said that he thought of a wafer thin throwaway blade one morning while shaving with his wedge blade Star safety razor.  In 1900, the first patent was taken out in America for an electric "dry shaver."

    When ware broke out in Europe, the U.S. Army contracted millions of Gillette's "Khaki Sets" for the men in the trenches.  This gave an enormous boost to the safety razor's and Gillette's, popularity, and created ready-made postwar opportunities for sales of blades as the men were allowed to keep the razor sets they were issued in the service.

    Women were now shaving; that is, shaving (or smoothing, as Gillette termed it) the armpits.  Curvfit and Gillette were among the first companies to recognize this market opportunity and exploit it.  Today, the inhabitants of Madison Avenue tout the razor for its sex appeal, i.e. the shaving of the legs, and the razor was used on a large scale for this purpose during World War II when silk stockings became impossible to obtain, and shaving and "leg markup" were substituted.

    Wilkinson is credited, in 1961, with developing the first commercially successful "coated-edge" blade, one covered with polytetrafluoroethylene, intended to "glide" over the face.

    Today's manufacturers are constantly developing improved edges, smoother coatings, better lathers and preps, while still keeping the prices affordable.   Shaving comfort is markedly improved over the relatively modern uncoated safety blades of the 1950's.  The shavers of today have never had it so good.

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Last updated: 27 January 2000
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