The Club of Free Masters "Art•RAZOR" unites people who sincerely love Razor both as a traditional tool and as a cultural phenomenon. Master Frans, chief of our project, repeatedly wrote about this in previous articles. In fact, it would be unlikely that we could achieve a certain success and recognition among users in Ukraine and far beyond its borders in a relatively short period of time, just over a year, if they treated their business differently. We will note that the core of our creative and production team is made up of people who are quite grown up. We all take our project seriously and responsibly, despite the inevitable difficulties of an objective and personal nature.
Of course, we use all the experience of previous generations of "razor builders", all the best that was invented and mastered before us. And we bring modern technologies — tools, instrumentation, high-quality carbon steels from the best world producers into manual manufacturing of razors. It is important that all our masters regularly use a razor blade. We are not interested in making razor-like souvenirs. And we do not make copies, replicas. Any our model is an author's engineering and design development; In the case of access to history, the model is a reinterpreted collective image of razors of a particular place and time of production. The luxury model "Le Général" is no exception. The razor pair in question is dedicated to two outstanding Napoleonic generals and military leaders, marshals to Joashen Murat and Emmanuel Grouchy.
We believe that there were no uninteresting periods in the history of the razor. However,
some stages of the development of this tool proved to be especially
important, since they determined the shape and design features of the
object for many decades. One of such early stages was the rapid evolution of the razor blade at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries in France. Literally
for a couple of decades, from the time of the Great French Revolution
to the abdication of the throne of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, the
French razor of archaic form consistently acquires the appearance of a
classical wedge. What are the main results of this rapid and successful transformation? Let us dwell on this in more detail.
The tendency to elongation before the vanishingly short tail of the razor led to the fact that the tail became functional, i.e., began participating in the canonical hairdressing grip, leaving the contour of the handle for a considerable distance, — the pinky found a reliable support. The body of the blade, while still very massive (since at that time the knives and razors were made almost exclusively by the forging method) and the "wedge", an isosceles triangle in section, acquires a very characteristic break in the transition zone from the blade to the tang. Incidentally, Frans noticed that the wedge prevailed then, until the formation of a greater or less concavity of the canvas with the help of abrasive wheels, there remained decades... This fracture led off the form factor of the razor from the knife-like and provided additional convenience for independent shaving, when the brush of the working arm obscured the shaving field Review. The nose of the blades of that pore could have a different shape, but basically was close to square; "barber" spout for opening the razor with one hand by engagement and the edge of the robe pocket was practiced a little later, along with the development of a culture of mass hairdressing. Some narrowing and rounding of the blade from the point to the heel was compensated by the shrinking of the back, to preserve the geometry of the razor, which would not create problems for the sharpener. Of course, at that time the form factor was made eye-sight, on the basis of experience, half intuitive. We must say a few words about the shape of the handles of the old French wedges. At that time, not knowing the mass casting and stamping, the design of the handle was dominated by a wide variety of shapes with a relatively small selection of materials (bone, horn, rarely dense wood). Nevertheless, the handle of the razor does not immediately acquire the tight bend that is characteristic of later products, and which de facto has become a razor classics. In the Napoleonic era, bending was often relatively small. But the figured contour of the handle and the more or less refined carving were practiced everywhere, which is typical for the early style of the Empire ... As for decorating the back and earle, in this respect even very ceremonial samples differed in spartan rigor and laconism. Virtually all of the above features are inherent in the "Murat et Grouchy" set of authorship «Art•RAZOR». And this is our tribute to the memory and memory of the French masters of that era. At the same time, our razors are made by locksmith's method, which made it possible to give the blades a somewhat grotesque, exaggerated look and additional chic. We perceive this stylization not as a parody or caricature, but as a reminiscence on the theme of the French wedge, from the point of view of a man of the 21st century.
Razor’s pair «Murat et Grouchy» produced by "Art•RAZOR", 2017
This approach seems to master Frans and his colleagues to be justified and productive, and users already appreciated our experiment. This concept in designing razors is realized in several models from "Art•RAZOR" (in particular, in the "Old Time" model, where we were oriented to the wedges of old England), which I plan to write separately. Our masters sincerely hope that our razors, both budget and luxury, will not disappoint our users and will serve them faithfully for many years.
In conclusion of this article, we invite distinguished readers to get acquainted with those samples of the old French wedges of the era, which in more or less good condition have reached our days.
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