A BRUSH WITH THE PAST

When it comes to good product design, craftsmanship and endurance, the British brush industry has been leading the way for hundreds of years, says Rhiannon Batten

- Rhiannon Batten

Britain lost one of the nation's treasures in 2004, when Robert Cresser's brush shop closed. The legendary store, trading on Edinburgh's Victoria Street for 131 years, made, sold and repaired everything from chimney brooms to bagpipe brushes and had a cult following among afficionados. Its old-fashioned approach and broom-packed Victorian shelving are said to have inspired JK Rowling to conjure the shops of Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter stories.

It was Diagon Alley, and Robert Cresser's, that came to mind when I spoke to Alan Russell, sixth-generation owner of brush-makers R. Russell. They don't quite stretch to Quidditch brooms strengthened with goblin-hammered ironwork, but Alan and his team of eight make almost any other brush you can think of.

One of the few British companies still making traditional brushes by hand, R. Russell was founded in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, in 1840. "The town was surrounded by beech woods and there were wood-turners and sawmills here, so there was the infrastructure for making wooden stocks,' explains Alan.

In around 1829, one Robert Webb set up a brush-making factory in Chesham. Tracking its success, others soon followed, including Alan's ancestor, Charles Russell, who started making brushes to sell when he wasn't working in the family pub. Passed down from son to son, the resulting business remains quite literally in family hands today. 'I spend most of my time sitting still at the bench making brushes, which suits me,' says Alan, who has been in the business since he was 16. 'I find making the brushes very relaxing. I don't have to think about it now. It just sort of happens. Many of today's Russell brushes are resin-set, though the company still makes some hand-drawn brushes using a physical and labour-intensive process that Alan likens to crochet.