“We’ve been making brushes here for six generations,” said Daniel Desjardins, standing in his family workshop, which has been turning out brushes made from horsehair or boar bristles since its opening in 1834.
Now, “it’s becoming a lost craft,” Desjardins said, citing fierce competition from cheaper goods made in Eastern Europe and China.
Synthetic materials replacing natural bristles and struggling to find young people interested in the trade also threaten the industry, leaving the profession’s future uncertain.
But brushmakers in France’s northern Oise valley are “refocusing” their efforts in a bid to revive the craft, said Desjardins, by turning towards the luxury sector.
Tucked away in a valley north of Paris, France’s brushmaking industry sprang up in the 19th century, drawn by the proximity to the country’s capital and the Therein river.
“There were 12 brush shops in my grandfather’s day,” just in his small village of Hermes, said Frederic Brigaud, whose family business has been supplying France’s brushmaking industry with boar bristles since 1930.
Now, “there are only three manufacturers of fine brushes left in all of France,” Brigaud added, including the one run by Desjardins in the village of Cauvigny.
The surviving companies have turned to high-end clients, including shoemakers like Berluti and Weston.
“The luxury niche is what’s saving us,” Desjardins told AFP, showing off stamps used to mark finished brushes with the names of upscale clients.
Brushmakers are catering to more niche customers, making “brushes for jewellery brands and indoor climbing gyms” to clean the holds on the walls, he added.
Even with this pivot, the company – which ships some 20,000 brushes a month â has gone from ten to three employees.
“It’s Europe that has ruined everything,” said Desjardins, saying customers flocked to Eastern European rivals paying wages “half the price” before turning to Chinese competitors.
But one French brushmaker says its shift towards luxury markets has brought it back from the brink.
Enzo Saintomer uses a drill to drive bristle holes into a wooden handle of one of the several hundred Fournival Altesse brushes made by hand every year.
“It looks simple, but the bristles have to be set at a certain angle’, said the 23-year-old.
These handmade brushes, which retail for 350 euros ($380), are a fraction of the some 400,000 brushes produced each year by the company, which says it has seen a renaissance in recent years.
Fournival Altesse went into receivership in 2005, but its shift towards the luxury market, championed by its new CEO Julia Tissot-Gaillard, is turning things around.
Tissot-Gaillard negotiated price increases of 100-150 percent with high-end clients, including Leonor Greyl, Kerastase and even Dior, by emphasising the quality and craftsmanship behind their brushes.
The company is now enjoying double-digit growth and has hired ten people this year, a sign their “efforts are paying off,” said Tissot-Gaillard.
