--- title: "The Mason Pearson Hairbrush Has Barely Changed Since 1885" url: https://quietmenace.com/grooming/mason-pearson-hairbrush-history/ author: Quiet Menace Editors section: Grooming published: 2026-10-30 updated: 2026-10-30 topics: Grooming Essentials, Heritage Brands --- # The Mason Pearson Hairbrush Has Barely Changed Since 1885 > A Yorkshire engineer set bristles in a rubber cushion in Victorian London. His family still makes the brush there, in 18 stages, mostly by hand. The company dates its start to 1885, in the East End of London, when an engineer named Mason Pearson solved two problems at once. He built an automatic machine for boring the holes that brush bristles sit in, which made brushes faster to produce. And he invented a hairbrush with its bristles set into a cushion of rubber that gave way under pressure, so the brush followed the shape of the head instead of scraping across it. The year fits the record. London held the [International Inventions Exhibition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Inventions_Exhibition) in South Kensington from May 1885, and the founder's grandson, chairman Michael Pearson, told the luxury trade body [Walpole](https://www.thewalpole.co.uk/news/introducing-our-latest-member-mason-pearson) that the boring machine won a silver medal there. We could not find the original patent records, so the date rests on the company and its family. The second idea is the one that lasted. More than 140 years later the company still makes that cushioned brush in London, still run by the Pearson family, and it looks almost exactly as it did when Queen Victoria was on the throne. ## The engineer from Yorkshire Pearson was a Yorkshireman. Wikipedia says he came to London in the mid-1860s to work at the British Steam Brush Works in the East End. The company's own [heritage timeline](https://masonpearson.com/our-heritage/) adds that he had worked in the wool processing industry before that, which is where the idea for an automatic brush-boring machine came from. The brush that came out of it was called pneumatic, after the air-cushioned rubber pad behind the bristles. Press it against your scalp and the pad gives, so the brush follows the curve of the head. Wikipedia describes the 1885 brush as the company's main product ever since, still sold little changed from the original design. The company says the hand-made rubber pad uses techniques Pearson invented in the nineteenth century, which were patented in 1911. ## A family firm in East London The company says Mason Pearson died aged 64. It does not give an exact date in its public timeline. His widow Mary then ran the business for about twenty years with their eldest son, Mason Jr., and it became known as Mason Pearson Brothers, according to the company timeline. The family has run it ever since. Wikipedia describes it as a business passed down through the generations and run today by the Pearson family in London. The firm has stayed in the same part of the city, though not in the same building. Its timeline says it spent 105 years on Old Ford Road before moving to Stratford in 1986, pushed out by commercial property development. It moved again in 2009. Today the brushes are made at the family's factory in Rainham, a few miles down the road from the original East London base, according to the Walpole interview. The company says it has never moved production out of London. Count back 105 years from 1986 and the arithmetic puts the firm on Old Ford Road from around 1881, which would mean both of Pearson's 1885 inventions came out of that address. The company does not say so directly, so treat that as our inference rather than its record. The company describes itself as a British family business with roots in the peak of the Industrial Revolution, and it counts 140 years of craftsmanship. Very few grooming firms can say the same founder's family still owns the company and still makes the product in the same city. That continuity is the whole pitch. Pearson's brushes are the grooming equivalent of the [Truefitt and Hill barbershop on St James's](https://quietmenace.com/grooming/truefitt-and-hill-st-jamess-barbershop/) or a hand-forged blade from the [straight razor revival](https://quietmenace.com/grooming/straight-razor-shaving-revival/), objects that have outlived several rounds of better ideas. ![A black and white photo of a cushioned hairbrush lying on a pale surface](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1674566566071-1cee4f5263eb?w=1600&h=1067&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop) *A modern cushion brush standing in for a Mason Pearson. The flexible pad behind the pins is the idea Pearson made his own. Photo by Jamal Yaliyev on Unsplash* ## How the brush is made The company says each brush passes through 18 production stages, a figure Michael Pearson repeated to Walpole, along with an output of up to 200,000 brushes a year. Six of them are finishing work, hand polishing and the gold foil lettering pressed by hand into the handle. The boar bristle comes from the same suppliers it has used since 1941, and technicians sort it by hand and grade it for thickness and stiffness. The plastic handle has been in use since 1946. Light wood backed brushes are still made to order. Even the box is old. Mason Pearson says its packaging is based on designs from the 1920s, printed with specially formulated inks. Fendrihan, the shaving and grooming retailer, also notes that the bristles are hand sorted and the rubber cushions handmade, and that production remains in London. The four original models are the Large Extra, the Small Extra, the Popular and the Junior, and Fendrihan says they remain the best sellers. The differences are size and bristle. Wikipedia singles out the Junior, which mixes boar and nylon, as the model that has been compared to a Ferrari among brushes. The wider catalog is short. The company's site groups its brushes into large, medium, handy and pocket sizes, plus military brushes, the handleless style that sits in the palm, and a line of combs. A pocket brush is the one to keep in a gym bag. A large or medium brush lives at home. By our arithmetic, the bristle suppliers date from 1941, in the middle of the Second World War, and the plastic handle from 1946, the year after it ended. Both are still in use. ## Which bristle for which hair This is the part most men get wrong. Mason Pearson sells three kinds of bristle, and the right one depends on how much hair you have and how thick it is. Here is the guide, based on the retailer descriptions Fendrihan publishes. | Bristle | Best for | Note | |---|---|---| | Pure boar | Fine to normal hair | Sensitive versions for fine or thinning hair | | Boar and nylon mix | Normal to thick hair | The middle of the range | | Nylon | Thick, hard-to-manage hair | The firmest option | Pick by your hair, not by price. If your hair is thick enough to need product to hold its shape, the kind of cut our [pomade history](https://quietmenace.com/grooming/pomade-hair-styling-history/) covers, the guide points to the mix or to nylon. If it is fine or thinning, it points to pure boar, and to the sensitive versions in particular. ## Living with one A Mason Pearson is not cheap for a hairbrush, and it is not meant to be replaced. Michael Pearson told Walpole that many models have stayed essentially unchanged for more than a century, and that the firm does not chase a new model every season. A brush only finishes what the cut started, so if your barber has not yet got the shape right, start with our guide on [how to ask for a haircut](https://quietmenace.com/grooming/how-to-ask-for-a-haircut/). For more, see [grooming essentials](https://quietmenace.com/topics/grooming-essentials/), [heritage brands](https://quietmenace.com/topics/heritage-brands/) and the [Quiet Menace grooming section](https://quietmenace.com/grooming/). The company did add something new in 2024, its first haircare range, a six-piece collection of shampoos and conditioners. The brush itself stays as it was. Most objects from 1885 are museum pieces. This one is in a bathroom drawer, and it still works the way its inventor meant it to. --- Filed under: [Grooming Essentials](https://quietmenace.com/topics/grooming-essentials/), [Heritage Brands](https://quietmenace.com/topics/heritage-brands/) Hero image: Photo by Mikhail Seleznev on Unsplash (Unsplash License)