Bristling with pride

• The British Museum houses one of the oldest brushes ever found —a scrubbing brush unearthed in Egypt that dates from 25BC. Cave paintings show that brushes were being used 16,000 years ago

• There is evidence of brushmaking in Britain in 200AD, but the methods and materials were crude, often involving the use of twigs and rushes. The industry expanded immensely over the 18th and 19th centuries, with communities often boasting multiple brushmakers, but it would be transformed again from the late 1800s onwards with the advent of mechanisation

• Animal hair, often horse and goat, as well as hog bristles, was used extensively in brushmaking before the 1800s

• The National Society of Brushmakers and General Workers, which became the Brushmakers’ Trade Union, originated in 1747, making it Britain’s oldest union

• The now defunct British Brush Manufacturers Association (BBMA) could trace its roots back to 1872. At first, it helped to bring stability to a then chaotic industry in which price cutting was rife. Both David and Philip Coward served as presidents