The Phoenix Shaving WÜRM: A Journey Through Time and Space
ShaveSplash was lucky enough to get an advance copy of Phoenix Shaving's upcoming new brush, WÜRM. As with many things from the fertile and inventive mind of Douglas Smythe the product is a bit of a roller coaster ride back in time, and into the future, at the exact same moment. It draws its inspiration from the Klenzo B1086 from the 1950s, the backstory of which is described below by Douglas himself.
We tested the brush over multiple shaves and here are our impressions. In addition to its retro-space-age alien good looks, the handle of the WÜRM fits nicely in the hand. It's 3.5 ounces feels solid without feeling heavy, and its accordion ridges provide excellent grip.
At 22mm, the knot is on the smaller side, which has pros and cons. ShaveSplash typically builds lather in a bowl, and the compact size requires a full brush load and a little extra swirling to achieve maximum lather volume. Conversely, the smaller profile allows for neat and precise application of the lather, putting it right where you want it with no mess. The knot is Phoenix’s Micro Super Future Hybrid, made from an in-house designed black synthetic fiber. The crimping gives it a look and feel that approximates natural badger, while remaining softer, as is typical of synthetics. By ShaveSplash’s subjective estimation, the fibers come closest in softness to the Mondial Krex and Plisson High Mountain White synthetic fibers.
Overall backbone is on the lighter side, making the knot soft and forgiving on the face, but still substantial enough to work up an excellent lather. It is difficult to compare backbone between knots because loft, width, density, and the set of the knot all play a role. We found the Atomic Rocket knot to be ever so slightly stiffer, with the Moon Stryker stiffer still. Much of that difference, however, appears to come from knot construction rather than the quality of the fiber itself.
On a crowded playing field, the WÜRM stands its ground. As with all things from Phoenix Shaving it has a wildly unique retro charm married with futuristic innovation, while also being easy to use and extremely comfortable on the face. Once again, Phoenix delivers something from the past which feels new, and is likely to be an icon of tomorrow.
Brush Comparison
Photo | Brand | Brush | Knot | Fiber | Size | Fiber Softness Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Mondial | Gibson | EcoSilvertip | Krex | 25 | 1 |
 | Plisson | Essential | Plisson Style | High Mountain White | 22 | 2 |
| Phoenix | Wurm | Micro Super Future Hybrid | In-house design | 22 | 3 |
 | Phoenix | Atomic Rocket | Synthetic Suave | In-house design | 26 | 4 |
 | Razorock | Beehive | Plissoft | In-house design | 28 | 5 |
 | Phoenix | Moon Stryker | Snickle Synth Hybrid | In-house design | 24 | 6 |
 | Maggards | Custom | Timberwolf | In-house design | 26 | 7 |
Please consider using this link when buying from Phoenix Shaving to support ShaveSplash. Please also consider downloading our app, ShaveSplash: The Rabbit Hole on iOS and Android.
Here's what Douglas Smythe from Phoenix Shaving writes about the WÜRM..... TLDR: The Phoenix WÜRM takes its physical inspiration from an obscure American vintage brush, the KLENZO B1086, a clear, rectangular, accordion-bodied Pure Badger shaving brush produced for the Rexall/United Drug empire around the middle of the 20th century. Its original base is marked U.S.A., STERILIZED, SET IN RUBBER and PURE BADGER. Surviving Klenzo records show Lucite lather brushes being sold by Rexall by 1948 and genuine 100% badger Klenzo brushes set in rubber being advertised during the early 1950s. [The exact B1086, however, appears to be remarkably elusive. Despite a surprisingly active community of vintage-brush collectors, I have yet to locate another documented example. Any help with this side quest is greatly appreciated. Also: Being that you are a fellow Shnerd or Shave Nerd, you might just find the following ramblings of a man, who breathes in way too much essential oil, interesting. Or at the very least, mildly entertaining...and possibly useful in a future blackmailing opportunity. Just read it.]
WÜRM
Specimen B1086?
The story behind WÜRM begins with one of the more stranger vintage shaving brushes I have ever come across, the KLENZO B1086! Originally made in clear Lucite, the brush has a rectangular footprint and a deeply segmented, accordion-like handle that feels far more mechanical than ornamental. Or maybe that's just me...But you have to admit, even its name sounds oddly futuristic. KLENZO B1086 could just as easily be the designation of a rather cute droid, a laboratory unit, or some forgotten piece of starship trooper tchotchke. No? --Turn the brush over and things only get stranger (kinda). As expected you get the usual branding and wording typical for that time: "KLENZO, U.S.A., STERILIZED, SET IN RUBBER, PURE BADGER, along with the B1086 model number...but then, there's a mysterious circled M whose meaning, as far as I can determine, has been lost to time. (maybe we can solve this today too! If you know anything, I'm all ears!)
To brush collectors however, KLENZO itself has considerably more history behind it. The name belonged to the United Drug Company, the organization behind Rexall and one of the great American drugstore empires of the twentieth century! United Drug began operations at 43 Leon Street in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1903, and the KLENZO name was being used for brushes by the early twentieth century. United Drug's trademark records specifically include lather brushes and claim first commercial use in 1909. By the 1920s, Rexall stores were already advertising KLENZO shaving brushes, including models proudly promoted as being “set in rubber,” a construction feature important enough to eventually find its way directly onto the bottom of brushes like the B1086.
Fun Fact: “Set in Rubber” wasn’t just vintage advertising language. It described a real manufacturing improvement. Instead of setting the bristles in glue, makers anchored them in rubber, creating a more water-resistant and durable bond. By the early 1900s, the phrase had become such a valuable selling point that competing brush companies actually fought over its use in court! (Rubberset knew what they were doing with that name!)
The word “STERILIZED” opens another, much darker chapter of shaving history. During the early twentieth century, contaminated animal-hair shaving brushes were linked to outbreaks of cutaneous anthrax. Wartime shortages and poorly disinfected animal hair created a genuine public-health problem, serious enough that sterilization and labeling requirements became part of the American brush industry. By the time brushes such as the B1086 appeared, the word STERILIZED had become a mark of reassurance. PURE BADGER mattered too, because KLENZO offered brushes in different grades. The B1086 was not coy about what it contained. This was a genuine badger brush from an era when knot material told the customer a great deal about the quality level of the tool in his hand.
ANOTHER FUN FACT: Early shaving-brush makers used several different sterilization methods. Some boiled the loose animal hair in water for hours. Others exposed it to pressurized steam in an autoclave, used prolonged dry heat, or soaked the finished brush in heated formalin, a formaldehyde solution. These treatments were meant to kill anthrax spores that could survive in contaminated horsehair and other animal fibers. #TheSporeYouKnow
Anyways...
The material of the handle is just as important to the story. The original B1086 was made from Lucite, and that meant something very different when the brush was new than it does today. Lucite was DuPont's name for a clear acrylic material introduced commercially in the 1930s. During World War II, acrylic became closely associated with aircraft canopies, windows, gun turrets, instrumentation, and other applications where engineers needed something transparent, lightweight, strong, and less fragile than glass. When these same materials began moving into civilian products after the war, they carried some of that technological prestige with them. Rexall was advertising Lucite shaving brushes by 1948, at a time when a transparent acrylic object still looked strikingly modern.
That is one of the things I love most about the original B1086. Today we look at a clear Lucite handle and see vintage design. When the brush was new, people would have seen the future! If you really want to shave like grandpa, you need to think like grandpa too. Come with me now as we crawl inside his mind. To him, this new material belonged to aviation, machinery, laboratories, and the rapidly advancing world of postwar technology! Exciting stuff for sure. The B1086 was not retro futuristic when it was made. It was simply futuristic! Time eventually caught up with that future, passed it, and left behind this wonderfully odd little object that now seems to belong equally to the 1950s and to some science-fiction world that never existed. [the perfect candidate for the PAA Universe.]
All that just to say, this is exactly why we chose acrylic for WÜRM. Simply recreating the B1086 in clear material would have turned the project into a reproduction, and that was never our intention. We wanted to preserve the material language of the original while pushing the design somewhere new and fun. The connection to the Lucite ancestor remains immediately visible (right?), but the green transforms the character of the brush. Like a single, fractured facet of an alien prism, light moves through the segmented handle and catches the repeating geometry, creating shifting layers of depth throughout the body. Depending on the angle and the light, WÜRM can resemble vintage scientific equipment, an obvious energy cell, a reactor component, or some unknown irradiated specimen recovered from a craft whose point of origin has yet to be disclosed. #GiantHungrySpaceWorm #BÜRP #EverythingIsFine
We also increased the scale. WÜRM is larger than the KLENZO that inspired it, with considerably more presence in the hand and a satisfying heft and weight that make the handle feel every bit as substantial as it looks. The enlarged proportions give those unusual accordion-like segments room to breathe, and acrylic brings enough density to the design that you immediately feel the difference when you pick it up. [You could also knock out a rabid squirrel with this sucker. I speak from experience. #Fact]
Mass Soul
There is another fun connection here that we could never have planned. [I mean, not without traveling back in time and moving things around.] United Drug began in Boston, Massachusetts. Our business also began in Massachusetts! More than a century separates those two origins, yet this obscure design tied to an old Massachusetts operation, disappeared into shaving history, resurfaced decades later, and eventually found its way into the orbit of another Massachusetts shaving operation with a long-standing weakness for forgotten hardware, lost designs, obscure history, and unexplained details. Even the original B1086's circled M remains unresolved. [Seriously, it keeps me up at night.] I mean, when I allow my mind to wander...it may have identified a manufacturer, mold maker, supplier, factory, or something else entirely! Given the Boston connection, Massachusetts is tempting, but there is no evidence strong enough to claim that, so for now the M remains exactly what it should be: a mystery. [Again, all ears if you can solve this riddle. #PappyNeedsHisSleep]
What YES, Is In A Name?
The name WÜRM brings another thread into the story for me. It is an indirect nod to “Starship Trooper” by YES, one of the great progressive-rock epics of the early 1970s! The final section of the piece is titled “Würm,” and it always spoke to my soul. In my minds eye right now I can conjure back up the images that music paints in my brain; a freaky, kaleidoscopic, scifi space worm! Turning and twisting, crawling through space-time, devouring everything in it's wake; stars, planets, galaxies...mankind? Rabid squirrels?
Sorry, forgot where I was for a sec.
Ahem...just listen to the track. [and wear headphones. *very important]
Soooo...I guess what I'm trying to say is, the original provides the theme. What comes next is interpretation. [at this point I totally forgot what we were even talking about. I sat there staring at a doorknob for like 2 minutes before it came back to me. But hey ho!]
WÜRM: Your New Favorite Brush
At this point, WÜRM started becoming more than the name of this ferocious brush. It became a new character in the PAA Universe, although exactly what kind of character still remains unclear. #irony--Machine, organism, droid, experimental grooming unit, recovered artifact, translucent extraterrestrial life-form with an inexplicable talent for building lather & world eating? We are still waiting on that report.
People Love This Knot
For the business end of the brush, we brought back one of your favorite PAA knots, the 22mm Micro Super Future Hybrid Synth. Longtime Phoenix brush collectors will remember this knot from the Astraeus, where it quickly earned a following because of the particular balance it offers. The fibers are exceptionally soft and can give an almost gel-tip-like sensation on the face, yet the knot retains enough backbone, spring, and pushback to remain lively in use. ["lively" may be the wrong word. How about, Punchy?]-- It does not collapse into a shapeless puff, nor does it rely on stiffness to create backbone. It has enough structure to work a lather while retaining the softness that made the Micro Super Future such a pleasure to use in the first place. Can I get an amen?
Bringing it back for WÜRM also creates a little Phoenix continuity of our own. Astraeus was another exercise in Retro Shave Tech, taking inspiration from an unusual vintage transparent brush and pairing that visual language with modern synthetic fiber technology. Pointing out, this knot really looks great in translucent handles and it's a real daily driver too!
And this brings us to the end of yet another epic, proto, PAA product description. Oh and remember: The world is WÜRM. [Specimen B1086]
...and it makes one hell of a shaving brush.
"Sci-Fi Shaving at its finest, Phoenix Shaving." #JustSayNo
If you like our content, you can also support ShaveSplash by buying us a cup of coffee.
Comments