History
A rudimentary form of shaving cream was documented in Sumer around 3000 BC. This substance combined wood alkali and animal fat and was applied to a beard as a shaving preparation.
Until the early 20th century, bars or sticks of hard shaving soap were used. Later, tubes containing compounds of oils and soft soap were sold. Newer creams introduced in the 1940s neither produced lather nor required brushes, often referred to as brushless creams.
Soaps are used by wetting a shaving brush, which is made out of either boar hair or badger hair, and swirling the brush on the soap, then painting the face with the brush. Brushless creams do not produce a lather, thereby removing its ability to protect the skin against cuts. Traditional soaps are still available today from such makers as The Art of Shaving, Crabtree and Evelyn, Proraso and Geo. F. Trumper.
Read more about this topic: Shaving Cream
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.”
—J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)
“Spain is an overflow of sombreness ... a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)