Nostalgia at its best.

As a guy, I like this.

I have to confess that I no longer "lather up", but I did so for years and loved it.
There was something decidedly masculine about it. And, don't be confused about it having anything to do with being on some kind of quest for the 'perfect shave.' No way. It was pure ritual, all the way, with every hot frothy rub of the brush.

It would take me back to those summer holidays at the cottage.

I had vivid memories of my dad, stripped to his waist, or wearing one of those vest style undershirts with those little hooked straps over his shoulders, and with his braces hanging down, looped from his waist, and with his face lathered, as he stood looking at a mirror hanging from a tree, engaging in a ritual as old as the many generations of the men of my family in Canada.

Most certainly, the 'real men' of my family wouldn't be caught dead making toilette in an indoor washroom. For one thing, such a thing didn't exist in their early log shanty homes.

And heavens forbid, none of my ancestral males, would grind their stubble with some kind of modern electric thingy, let alone put perfumed water on their faces.

Shaving like this was seasonal - when a man would blow the stink of house off his skin, and stand half stripped outside, and take his water from a hot basin and lather up with brush and mug and shave with the scent of cedar in the air. And then, when finished, the soapy water would arc into the air, and he would walk over to the hand pump and complete his ritual with bracing handfulls of cold, clean, water.

And it all came back when I chanced upon Sara Bonnyman's website, and discovered her 'moss scuttles'. Sara touched base with something which seems to have been lost with the passage of time.

Click here to see Sara's other fine works of pottery and of course, her shaving scuttles.