Description

4" paint brush with black hog bristles attached to the wooden handle by a silver color metal band. Written in permanent black marker on one side of the silver metal band is "Return to Derek Till" and on the other side is stamped with "4 Inch" and two arrows pointing to the edges. The wood handle is stained at the top and black at the end with a red and gold stripe in the middle. Black electical tape covers the manufacturer name on both sides.

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. The brush company Rubberset asked Arthur D. Little (a consulting firm with 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. Derek Till, one of the researchers on that project, compared this brush with natural hog bristles to the synthetic counterparts they were making.