Description

This object is a paint brush with synthetic bristles attached to a wooden handle with metal band. The handle is painted red and gold, and "Rubberset Co." is hand-printed on the gold area. The brush is also marked with the hand-written number "13427" in pencil written, and stamped with I02K2 in black.

The bristles on this brush were developed by scientists at the consulting firm Arthur D. Little for the Rubberset Company, a manufacturer of professional-grade paint brushes. Before the 1960s, the best brushes were made of Chinese hog bristle, which had a springiness and high taper ratio that made them a favorite among professional painters. Rubberset asked Arthur D. Little (which had a research and development laboratory that manufactured novel materials for its clients) to develop a synthetic bristle that was not subject to the fluctuations in availability like its natural counterpart. Since hog bristles are made of keratin, scientists at Arthur D. Little developed a process to extract and powder keratin from chicken feathers, mix the powder with solvents, and then extrude the resultant mixture as a fiber whose physical properties matched that of natural hog bristles.