One of the 'youngest' particpants in the vintage shaving brush arena is 'Surrey' the were mostly a soapmaking outfit, and I suppose they had the brushes made for them by someone else, but what a great little brush this is! It displays, grips and very much to my liking in a shallow bowl or as a face latherer.
A bit of history on the company; Surrey's public filings showed it as a maker of private-label soap products along with the small shaving soap business, and the business news of the time described it as having a couple of hundred employees. But there were issues with overexpansion and insufficient revenues to pay back their construction loans or provide returns to the stockholders. In 2001 the whole operation collapsed and was sold off to a California business that made shower poufs (the colorful plastic mesh cloud things that you've seen if you share a bathroom with a woman.) The facilities in Leander were foreclosed on in 2003. But in an interview with Mantic, the Van Der Hagens describe how their current operation started in the same year. Apparently they managed to reacquire their shaving soap operations and restarted business back up in Liberty Hill as a private family company. They first appeared on the internet in 2004 offering the same Surrey branded products they had before the crash, but by 2006 was selling them under their own name instead of the Surrey name. And that's how we have Van Der Hagen now.
We left the ageing yellow marks on it that Bakelite tend to produce on lighter colours over the years, it suits the brush and we are not buffing it out, feel free to do some testing on the base if you like, a polishing compound and elbow grease should see it come back to it's original colour.
It stands 106 mm high, has a 54 mm loft, a waist of 31 mm and a belly of 37 mm. The brush weighs 69 grams. This brush is fitted with a 24 mm Silvertip and looks great!