Origin Of Goods

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31007, 12 March 1966, Page 14

Origin Of Goods

Sir,—Are not the name and whereabouts of the manufacturer supposed to be shown on most articles for sale? It may not be so bad now, but all sorts of spurious stuff was on the market a few years ago. Recently I bought, from a highly respectable firm, one of those old-fashioned badgerhair shaving brushes, hard to come by nowadays and by no means inexpensive. According to the legend, it was authenticated as genuine badger hair, and certainly felt like it; but there was no mention on the carton of where or by whom it was made. Furthermore, the firm concerned seems to have had considerable difficulty in tracing its origin, though pretty sure it must have been made somewhere in this country. Had this happened some years ago, when Japan was industriously imitating, if not counterfeiting other countries’ products, one might have had some misgivings about those legendary “Hairy Ainos” as a possible source of the basic material. —Yours, etc., M.T. March 11, 1966.