11: Great British Brushes

Axminster was once an important British centre for the manufacture of tooth, nail and hairbrushes, employing hundreds of local people. Two brush businesses (Bidwell’s Brush Works and James Coate’s London Brush Works) existed together in side-by-side factory buildings at the bottom of Castle Hill in 1882, attracted by the River Axe as a power source.

The big challenge in brush making in those days was the ability to fix multiple small bunches of bristles to a shaped head made from wood or bone. Skilled workers would typically spend a complete day drawing the bristles for a hairbrush through pre-drilled holes and fixing them before they were further cemented.

The back would then be applied, the brush shaped, sanded, stained and polished. In the case of tooth and nail brushes the cemented brushes would be washed, polished, graded, stamped and packed ready for sale, typically in packs of 144, each going through up to 70 different processes. Bidwells sold 72 different patterns of tooth brush alone, of 12 different qualities and four different stiffnesses. They also offered 200 patterns of hair brushes.