Brush making is a very old art that in
central European traditions was combined with the making of brooms. England,
France and Germany have the longest traditions in brush making.
The modern artist brush consists of three
parts. The tuft (T) is the bundle of hair, bristle or
fiber that holds and releases the painting liquid. The visible portion of the
tuft, about half its total length, is the length out, which
consists of the belly or widest middle part and the
tapering point or tip (in a round) or edge (in
a flat).
The ferrule (F)
is the metal collar that connects the tuft to the handle, supports the tuft
during painting, protects the end of the wood handle from moisture, and determines
the size and shape of the brush.
The handle (H) is
made of a dense hardwood selected for straightness. Plastic handles have been
tried but customer's associate plastic with low quality and lack of durability.
The Tuft is made from pelts or ears of an animal.
They are first shampooed and then hung to dry. Sable and squirrel pelts are
sometimes oven cured at low temperatures to increase the hair elasticity or
"spring."
Brush hairdressers scissor the prepared
hairs or bristles from the pelt, hold large tufts between thumb and fingers and
use a fine comb to separate the hairs and remove hair fragments, fine hairs and
stubborn debris. Hairs are meticulously sorted, separated by length and cleaned
of any broken pieces. Hairs of the same length are bundled for sale to brush
makers; because there are fewer of the longest hairs on an animal, these are
more expensive. Brush makers who do not
do the hairdressing themselves carefully unbundle and inspect a shipment when
it is received.
To make a tuft by hand, the brush maker
pinches out or counts the exact number of hairs required for the brush size,
then places these hairs (pointed end down) inside the brush maker's mold; a hollow brass
cylinder with thick sides and base, somewhat resembling an oversized thimble,
whose inner contour defines the shape of the finished brush (rounded at the
bottom for rounds, and flat for flats). The cup is tapped repeatedly on a stone
slab, which drives the tip of every hair to the bottom of the cup.
A different procedure, called stacking, is
used for liners or other tapering brushes that do not have a pronounced belly.
As many as five lengths of hair are used, carefully arranged with the longest
hairs at the center of the tuft and inserted into the cup butt end down, with
the points exposed.
Once the hairs have been cupped to the
appropriate shape, the exposed ends are wrapped tightly at the base with string
and the tuft is removed from the cup. If the brush is a round, the string is
tied off with a knot and trimmed. The brush maker then manipulates the tuft
with the fingers to perfect the shape of the belly and point. The inner end of
the tuft is then sheared off flat to the desired length, and the tuft is
inserted into the metal ferrule from the wide (handle) end, pulled through to
expose the desired length out, then secured with a penetrating, waterproof
adhesive and hung, tuft down, to dry. (Synthetic tufts are made of extruded
fine filaments of plastic cut into desired lengths and sorted by machine.) Tufts
are sometimes purchased cupped and tied for assembly by brush makers, but they
more often use a set that consists of the tuft already glued
into the metal ferrule.
The Ferrule (metal ferrules) were first commercially
used in brush making around 1890. The highest quality ferrules are seamless;
not made of a flat piece of metal rolled into a cylinder. Fine quality brushes
are mounted into ferrules made of a hard but malleable, corrosion resistant
metal such as brass or copper; these are typically plated with nickel, silver
or (rarely) gold. (Ferrules on cheaper brushes are made of softer aluminum or
tin, which bends too easily.) They represent almost a third of the total cost
to manufacture a brush.
In nearly all fine commercial brushes the
ferrule is double or triple crimped at the handle end (as in the drawing at
left) to fasten the handle securely and keep water from seeping inside.
Ferrules for flat brushes may be cylindrical in their original shape and
flattened to achieve a particular brush style. Natural quills from the feathers
of ducks, geese, and other fowl are sometimes still used.
The Handle, made of wood is chemically sealed, then
finished by dipping in lacquer or polyurethane. The end inside the ferrule is
flat and the butt end of the tuft is glued directly to it. This is the weakest
part of the brush, because the end is not lacquered or varnished so that the
adhesive can bond tightly with the wood. Prolonged soaking will expand the wood
and loosen the adhesive holding the tuft in place. Acrylic handles are also
used, particularly for synthetic brushes. Handles vary widely in diameter and
length, but generally are shorter for watercolor brushes than for oil/acrylic
brushes.
Brush Sizes. Round brushes are sized using
a standard numbering system that ranges from #00000 or #000 for the smallest
brushes, then typically runs #00, #0, #1 to #12 in single number intervals,
then #14 to #20 in even number intervals, and sometimes #24 or higher for the
largest brushes.
It is unclear as to how these numbers are
defined or assigned to a brush size. The best analogy is that they are like
shoe sizes, fairly standard but somewhat different across manufacturers and
styles. The numbers usually identify the relative sizes of brushes within the
same type of brush by the same manufacturer. But across manufacturers, brushes
of the same numerical size and type will typically not be exactly the same
actual size or shape.
Because English brushes are typically
made with wider bellies, there are effectively two numbering systems, English
and continental (or European). The English numbers refer to a larger brush: an
English size 8 brush is equivalent to a German size 9, an English 12 to a
German 14, and so on. Flats are usually sized by the measured width of the edge
of the ferrule, although some companies size their flats with a numbering
system similar to rounds.
Brushes are handmade from raw materials
that vary widely in quality and availability. For that reason, brushes are
always subtly different from each other, even when they come from the same
manufacturer, in the same size and in the same series number. Even synthetic brushes show this variation; a pleasant reminder that these are among the
oldest tools made for the human hand.
