Founded in 1777, Kent has more to offer than a date on a box. Its factory, archive and product range reveal a working manufacturer—and why the origin of each brush still matters.
Image: The Local
On a catalogue page supplied by Kent, brushes are arranged by the jobs they do: shaving, hair, teeth, nails and clothes. Some have handles; others sit in the palm. Even in an archive image, the distinctions are immediately understandable.
That is a more useful introduction to Kent than age alone. This is a business built around particular tools for particular tasks, not one object with a heritage story attached.
An archive with a present tense
Kent was established in 1777. Today, the family-controlled company has its operating base at River Gade Works in Apsley, Hertfordshire, where brush-making remains part of the business.
The contemporary photographs supplied to The Local show a different kind of detail from the catalogue: timber, workbenches, equipment and people at work. They put the finished object back into a working environment.
The archive and factory photographs are interesting together. One shows how the company presented its tools; the other shows some of the work behind a current manufacturing business. Neither asks us to imagine that almost 250 years have passed without change.
KENT BRUSHES
Not every Kent brush has the same origin
A British factory does not mean an entire catalogue is British-made.
Kent tells us its nail brushes, clothes brushes, beard brushes, bath bats and 100% handmade ladies’ and men’s ranges are made in the UK. It identifies Kent Salon, Kent Create, AirHedz and Peter Rabbit as the main examples of ranges manufactured elsewhere.
All its brushes, the company says, are packed and shipped from Apsley. That is useful to know, but packing and making are different stages. For a shopper choosing specifically on origin, the answer needs to belong to the particular brush.
Follow one brush back through its materials
The LHS5 offers a more detailed example. Kent describes it as handmade in its factory and identifies suppliers for the woods, bristle and smaller components: German suppliers for cherry and satin wood, an Indian supplier for bristle, and English suppliers for items including screws, wire, lacquer and glue.
It is an international supply chain feeding a British making process. Naming those contributions makes the story clearer; it does not diminish the work done here. Supplier location, though, is not necessarily where a raw material originally grew or was produced.
Two products we have used
The Local has tried the CP6 cashmere clothes brush and the BA10 baby hairbrush, and we would back both. They are our two personal points of entry into a much wider range, rather than the basis for a claim about every Kent product.
What interests us is their specificity. Clothes care and baby hair care require different objects. The connection between them is a maker thinking in brushes: shape, material and purpose, rather than one design stretched across unrelated jobs.
KENT BRUSHES
Why the history matters
A founding date is a reason to look closer, not a reason to stop asking questions. Where does the making happen now? What does this particular product do? Which parts of its story can the company explain?
Kent is compelling because there is still a working business behind those questions. The archive gives it depth; the present-day work gives it relevance.
