I’m looking for a good brush for lettering, and I came across this explanation of why Winsor and Newton brushes — once top of the line — are no longer consistent:
Basically, what it comes down to is time spent in a single location. Brush making takes years, even decades to learn, and making the kolinsky sable brushes is the hardest, requiring workers who’ve been brush makers for 20 years or more. If a brush company moves it’s facilities, (W&N), and the brush makers don’t or can’t follow, their experience is lost, and therefore the quality. You do still see, every so often, a decent W&N brush, but the rarity of them leads me to conjecture it may be as little as one person making those elusive few. I imagine an old man, surrounded by fumbling whipper-snappers, weeping to himself as he places each of his perfect brushes on a conveyor belt alongside their splaying messes of expensive hair.
We old folks here laughed out loud.
April 13, 2014
And I join you now.
it sounds like an up and coming competitor revealing that all is not well in the “brush” market; in fact I believe it is quite hard to get quality “bristles” or whatever the correct terminology is.
It was written by someone who draws comics for a living. He was trying to tell people about good brushes they can use. He loves and uses an old Winsor and Newton one, but they don’t make them like that any more.