A brush with destiny
Once, when I was very young, I decided to trim my father’s oil brushes. To say he was not best pleased is putting it mildly but instead of chastising me, he explained their function and their manufacture. I was taught to respect them. I have loved brushes in their numerous varieties ever since.
The dim mist of time
Probably the earliest known brushes were from Egypt, from around 2000BC, and were similar to pens. The brush/pen was usually made from reed/papyrus and many were very pointed and produced fine lines. They were invariably wielded by scribes. Reed bundle brushes would have been used for large areas of flat colour on tomb murals. The Egyptian way was to outline the image then fill in with a larger brush. The method of filling in sometimes involved stippling. By this method they were able to introduce some form of shading.
The Greeks and Romans used a variety of hair, much of blending and softening into their brushwork. Greek and Roman artists also used other animal hair, for example squirrel, cat, stoat and sable. Both Egyptians and the Greco-Romans used tempera paints, presumably egg tempera applied to prepared papyrus sheets or wooden boards. For this kind of work fine hair bristles would have been used. To get the suppleness of the reed, the artist/scribe would have sucked and nibbled at the tip to make it pliable.
