Item Description
Brothers’ criteria for the 3 Claveles Professional Horsehair Brush Review
1. Quality 8
2. Balance 9
3. Luxury Factor 8
4. Ease of Lather 10
5. Price 10
6. Stiffness of tips 3
7. Softness of tips 9
8. Ergonomic 9
I've only reviewed one single brush, the one that I have and currently use in combination with 3 badger brushes.
As with every other product we use, the next person might get their own horsehair brush and have a totally different experience than mine.
Quality: The handle is solid wood with a metal bolster which houses the knot. The brush has only shed 3 hairs during the initial break-in and the first three weeks of almost daily use. The horsehair is cut from longer hair fibers, so the tips of the hairs are going to be square on a new brush.
Balance: The heft is appropriate for a brush model called Professional by the manufacturer. In use, the large knot when loaded with lather and water is nicely offset by the length and weight of the handle.
Luxury Factor: The softness of the horsehair in this brush on the face is very similar to my Kent BK4, and painting the lather on the face is smooth and gentle.
Ease of Lather: This brush is a willing participant in the serious business of doing what it is intended to do. There’s no pampering or babying, no lore or mystery involved. It shows up, collects both of the two ingredients it needs to do what it does, and delivers the lather quickly and efficiently.
The horsehair works for me as easily on soap as with cream. I have used bowl lathering and face lathering with equal ease and success. I use distilled water for shaving. The non-tallow Trumper soaps begin to create lather within 3 to 5 swirls of the soaked and gently shaken horsehair brush on the surface of the soap. In moments the brush is loaded and begins doing what it does best. This is the basis for my satisfaction with my first horsehair brush.
The horsehair doesn’t hold water as well as badger, but it has a natural lathering ability. I have found that the horsehair will take whatever quantity of water you give it and it will create as fine a lather as your cream or soap is capable of providing. If you spare the water, the lather will be thicker. If you go to the water more often, the lather produced becomes more profuse, but I am very impressed by the fact that none of the lathers I have produced with my horsehair brush have been thin and wispy, or watery and weak. The horsehair’s nature is not to hold as much water within itself as the mighty badger brush.
The horsehair gets whatever amount of water it needs from the user. Someone new to the horsehair brush is probably going to find that he needs to dip more than just the tips into the water, and as the lather is created, the horsehair will use whatever water has been provided at a faster rate, since it isn’t “holding” water deep within the highly absorbent bristles, it appears to hold the water on the exterior, where it’s needed at the moment of the release of the lather onto the skin.
A few sentences above, you will recall I referred to a “natural lathering ability”. This may be the horsehair brush’s most important feature. Maybe this explains why horsehair was the dominant fiber used in shaving brushes in the past centuries.
The horsehair doesn’t hoard the massive quantities of lather it creates; it seems ready to release the excess lather about as promptly as it’s created. Painting the incredibly soft hair back and forth, up and down is the power that drives the lather-making engine.
Upon completion of the shave, the horsehair brush does have ample amounts of lather still stored within itself, but in my experience, not as much as a badger brushes. The horsehair makes great lather and gives up its lather more readily.
The process can be described as efficiently mixing water and soap/cream in very little time with very little effort, and delivering the desired consistency and quantity of finished product to the face. That’s what I call getting down to business.
Price: The total cost to me for the brush and the shipping from Spain was a bit over $44 based on the exchange rate for Euros vs. Dollars at the time. Shipping was more than half the total cost. There are few, if any, quality badger shaving brushes in that price range. This is the most expensive of the horsehair brushes I located. My son bought one for $10 plus shipping, and I bought my second horsehair brush for $23. This is undoubtedly due to the current factors of supply and demand.
Stiffness of tips: Not very stiff. The BK4 is not a very stiff brush, and the horsehair brush is very similar to the absence of stiffness inherent in the Kent Silvertip BK4 brush.
Softness of tips: Rated very high for this brush. The horsehair feels lush and luxurious as it creates the lather and deposits it on the face.
Ergonomic: This horsehair brush feels comfortable in my hand while I’m using it, due to the design and the weight.
Discussion: The horsehair rinses and dries rapidly. It aerates freely and easily. After about 7 latherings it loses all factory/manufacturing odors, and quickly takes on the soft pleasing fragrances of the shaving products used. This brush is different. It’s good. It doesn’t take too long to figure out how to use it, and what it’s going to do when you use it.
The horsehair is fine and not densely packed in this brush. It is much less thick and stiff (dense) than the Omega 48 I had for a while. I think this brush performs very similarly to a badger brush, and specifically, very similarly to my one year old Kent BK4.
It kinda blooms out after it's been rinsed out, then after it's completely dry, it does tend to want to spring back to it's original profile.
1. Quality 8
2. Balance 9
3. Luxury Factor 8
4. Ease of Lather 10
5. Price 10
6. Stiffness of tips 3
7. Softness of tips 9
8. Ergonomic 9
I've only reviewed one single brush, the one that I have and currently use in combination with 3 badger brushes.
As with every other product we use, the next person might get their own horsehair brush and have a totally different experience than mine.
Quality: The handle is solid wood with a metal bolster which houses the knot. The brush has only shed 3 hairs during the initial break-in and the first three weeks of almost daily use. The horsehair is cut from longer hair fibers, so the tips of the hairs are going to be square on a new brush.
Balance: The heft is appropriate for a brush model called Professional by the manufacturer. In use, the large knot when loaded with lather and water is nicely offset by the length and weight of the handle.
Luxury Factor: The softness of the horsehair in this brush on the face is very similar to my Kent BK4, and painting the lather on the face is smooth and gentle.
Ease of Lather: This brush is a willing participant in the serious business of doing what it is intended to do. There’s no pampering or babying, no lore or mystery involved. It shows up, collects both of the two ingredients it needs to do what it does, and delivers the lather quickly and efficiently.
The horsehair works for me as easily on soap as with cream. I have used bowl lathering and face lathering with equal ease and success. I use distilled water for shaving. The non-tallow Trumper soaps begin to create lather within 3 to 5 swirls of the soaked and gently shaken horsehair brush on the surface of the soap. In moments the brush is loaded and begins doing what it does best. This is the basis for my satisfaction with my first horsehair brush.
The horsehair doesn’t hold water as well as badger, but it has a natural lathering ability. I have found that the horsehair will take whatever quantity of water you give it and it will create as fine a lather as your cream or soap is capable of providing. If you spare the water, the lather will be thicker. If you go to the water more often, the lather produced becomes more profuse, but I am very impressed by the fact that none of the lathers I have produced with my horsehair brush have been thin and wispy, or watery and weak. The horsehair’s nature is not to hold as much water within itself as the mighty badger brush.
The horsehair gets whatever amount of water it needs from the user. Someone new to the horsehair brush is probably going to find that he needs to dip more than just the tips into the water, and as the lather is created, the horsehair will use whatever water has been provided at a faster rate, since it isn’t “holding” water deep within the highly absorbent bristles, it appears to hold the water on the exterior, where it’s needed at the moment of the release of the lather onto the skin.
A few sentences above, you will recall I referred to a “natural lathering ability”. This may be the horsehair brush’s most important feature. Maybe this explains why horsehair was the dominant fiber used in shaving brushes in the past centuries.
The horsehair doesn’t hoard the massive quantities of lather it creates; it seems ready to release the excess lather about as promptly as it’s created. Painting the incredibly soft hair back and forth, up and down is the power that drives the lather-making engine.
Upon completion of the shave, the horsehair brush does have ample amounts of lather still stored within itself, but in my experience, not as much as a badger brushes. The horsehair makes great lather and gives up its lather more readily.
The process can be described as efficiently mixing water and soap/cream in very little time with very little effort, and delivering the desired consistency and quantity of finished product to the face. That’s what I call getting down to business.
Price: The total cost to me for the brush and the shipping from Spain was a bit over $44 based on the exchange rate for Euros vs. Dollars at the time. Shipping was more than half the total cost. There are few, if any, quality badger shaving brushes in that price range. This is the most expensive of the horsehair brushes I located. My son bought one for $10 plus shipping, and I bought my second horsehair brush for $23. This is undoubtedly due to the current factors of supply and demand.
Stiffness of tips: Not very stiff. The BK4 is not a very stiff brush, and the horsehair brush is very similar to the absence of stiffness inherent in the Kent Silvertip BK4 brush.
Softness of tips: Rated very high for this brush. The horsehair feels lush and luxurious as it creates the lather and deposits it on the face.
Ergonomic: This horsehair brush feels comfortable in my hand while I’m using it, due to the design and the weight.
Discussion: The horsehair rinses and dries rapidly. It aerates freely and easily. After about 7 latherings it loses all factory/manufacturing odors, and quickly takes on the soft pleasing fragrances of the shaving products used. This brush is different. It’s good. It doesn’t take too long to figure out how to use it, and what it’s going to do when you use it.
The horsehair is fine and not densely packed in this brush. It is much less thick and stiff (dense) than the Omega 48 I had for a while. I think this brush performs very similarly to a badger brush, and specifically, very similarly to my one year old Kent BK4.
It kinda blooms out after it's been rinsed out, then after it's completely dry, it does tend to want to spring back to it's original profile.
