- Thread starter
- #21
That's wunnerful.
Absolutely.
It's like that TV ad for Infiniti cars - "Luxury should be lived in."
I'm really curious about the canvas rolls. With the stenciled numbers they look like they might be military issue, but why would they have room for half a dozen razors?
- Maybe they belonged to the regiment's barber, and he needed spare razors ready to go.
- Maybe they were issued to hold some other stuff (surgical instruments?), but got re-purposed for razors after the war.
- Maybe they were home-made, cut up and resewn from some other kind of roll.
There are many mysteries wrapped up in this stuff. The canvas rolls is one of them. You cannot easily tell from the pictures but they look different from one another. The one without the writing is a lighter shade that makes it look newer or possibly just less worn. The stitching is different between them too. I have entertained the idea that they originated with my grandfather from his time in the Army. He served in the Royal Engineers in the years after WWII, and if you look the initials "RE" are on the roll. But surely by this time straight razors weren't common military issue , so why would a razor roll be? I don't know enough about razor rolls to tell if these are typical specimens or if these look like something that had another purpose and have been adapted to carry straight razors.