A shaving brush has two main parts; the handle and the bristle load. Handle material comes in six general categories; plastic, wood, bone, fossil, metal, and exotic. Each category, of course, has several or many individual items. For instance, “wood” can apply to several species. Plastic includes celluloid, polypropylene, and “tortoise shell” because those are always faux shell and made from plastic. For bone, I’m including ivory, ram or buffalo horn (although newer “horn” brushes are imitation horn and probably plastic), and oosik. Fossil handles can include bone fossils, fossilized ivory, and fossilized oosik. Metal is, of course, metal (i.e. steel, brass, or chrome). Exotic actually means anything that doesn’t fit in the other categories, like mother of pearl, micarta (a laminate that one could argue is actually a plastic), porcelain, and crystal. However, most of the bone, fossil, and exotic category handles are found in older or custom made shaving brushes. Almost all new brushes are made from plastic, wood, or metal.
For those of you who don’t know and are brave enough to ask bear with me on this topic of oosik. Almost all male mammals have a baculum, or penis bone, with the exception of humans (of course), horses, cetaceans (whales & dolphins), rabbits, marsupials, and hyenas. Oosik is the baculum of native Alaskan carnivores, specifically walruses, seals, sea lions, and polar bears. Oosik is often used in Alaska for making knife handles and I’ve seen it used for shaving brush handles as well.
In general, all handles are functionally the same and the only difference is artistic or maybe status-driven. A word of caution with wood and metal handles. Wood handle can split if the brush is not drained and dried properly. Metal handles can easily chip your ceramic shaving dish if you’re not careful and a little zealous while whipping up a lather.
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