Seventy years at Torridge

1954 — four benches in a net loft

The works began above a chandlery on Bideford quay with four dressers, all of whom had learned the trade elsewhere and none of whom owned the building. The first customers were two art shops in Exeter and a school supplier in Plymouth. The company was incorporated the following spring; the number on the footer of this site is the original one.

1968 — the black handle

The plain black seven-coat handle arrives, replacing a varnished natural finish that showed every mark. It has not changed since, which is occasionally raised with us as a missed branding opportunity.

1971 — Series 40 settles

The Kolinsky range is re-specified with the fill weights and out-lengths still in use today. A size 6 round made this month and one made in 1971 are, as far as we can measure, the same brush. We have the 1971 sample in a drawer and it still points.

1981 — the hog importer

A supply agreement is signed with the Chungking importer we still buy through. Both companies have changed hands since; the arrangement has not been renegotiated in forty-five years, which says more about the trade than about either party.

1991 — the near-closure

Cheap imported brushes take the education market almost entirely within two years. The works goes to a three-day week and loses eleven people. What saves it is contract manufacture: a European brand asks whether we would make their top two lines, and by 1994 that work is half of output. It has been between a third and a half ever since, and it is the reason the benches survived.

2003 — Torridge Works

The move to the current building on Clovelly Road. Larger, single-storey, and — for the first time — with somewhere for the dressers to sit down.

2016 — the synthetic parallel

A full synthetic alternative to every natural-hair reference is introduced, at first because two distributors asked and later because a third of new stockists want it as standard. It now outsells the natural range in every market except the United Kingdom.

2021 — reworking becomes a service

What had been an informal favour for two colleges becomes a priced service: heads stripped, re-dressed and re-set at a third of new. Roughly four thousand brushes a year come back through the door.

What has not changed

• Every Kolinsky head is water-tested by hand before crimping.
• Tying is done by feel, by people who trained here for two years first.
• We do not sell direct to the public, so a stockist is never competing with us.
• Prices are published to the trade in one list. There is no negotiated pricing and never has been.