Quality Over Quantity: 75 Years of A.S. Handover

Published on 07.02.2025 by Handover

Written by Sam Roberts / bl.ag – this article appears in Issue 6

While good craftspeople don’t blame their tools, high quality tools do contribute to a higher quality of output. And, in the case of British brushmaker A.S. Handover, a focus on quality has always been at the heart of the business. As it celebrates its 75th anniversary, its longest-serving employee (and owner!) Michael Venus has been reflecting on the firm’s history.

Michael took over in 1980 as a way out of a boring accountancy job. By that time, founder Alan Stuart Handover had passed the day-to-day running of things to his wife, Irene. Michael recalls that “a rather nice touch was that she was able to sign the contract which passed the company on to its next chapter, ‘I. Handover’”.

Creative Destruction: The Impact of War

The business that we now know as A.S. Handover was the result of the 2002 merger of Edward Mason Ltd. and A.S. Handover Ltd. Both firms’ origins have second world war connections, with Edward Mason founded to manufacture brushes in support of the war effort. Michael points out that “brushes were considered essential, to the extent that brushmakers were exempt from national service”.

Mr Mason had previously worked as a UK sales representative for a German manufacturer, but the war had stopped trade with the major producers in Germany. However, Mason was able to form a partnership with a skilled brushmaker that had fled to escape persecution.

At that time, the handles were made of wood and the ferrules of tin, aluminium, or nickel-plated brass. Various types of natural hair such as hog bristle, pony hair, squirrel hair, ox hair, and sable were used to fill the brushes and, despite the hostilities, high quality raw materials continued to be available.

It was shortly after the war that, separately, Mr Handover started selling decorators’ brushes from a small hayloft in North London. The Blitz had left lots of rebuilding, and hence redecorating, to be done, so demand was high. However, Mr Handover soon recruited a talented young brushmaker to meet a wider demand he’d identified from professional users: for high quality artists’ brushes in a range of applications, which included graphic artists, poster writers, signwriters, animation studios, and advertising companies.

_{Alan Stuart Handover first started selling brushes out of a hayloft here in Angel Yard, Highgate, North London.}

Changing Hands

Both firms weathered the post-war years, which were plagued by fluctuating prices and patchy availability of raw materials. They also faced challenges recruiting young people to train in the skills of brushmaking. However, demand remained strong and Irene Handover was there to meet it, “travelling around the sign studios of London with a bag of samples”. Michael adds that “to this day, old signwriters still remember ‘when Mrs Handover used to visit us’”.

The year 1980 proved pivotal for both companies: Edward Mason died, leaving the firm to his daughter and her husband who moved it to a new factory in Welwyn Garden City, about 24 km (15 miles) north of London, and Michael Venus bought Handover’s business.

_{Pure sable and sable mix brushes from A.S. Handover’s 2116, and 2117 ranges.}

One of Michael’s first jobs was to continue Mrs Handover’s travelling sales work:

“I made trips to the old destinations of sign studios, animation artists, printers etc. I would also make regular visits to the large ticket studios located in department stores like Selfridges and Harrods. These studios purchased dozens of ticket-writing brushes and ‘one strokes’ to create the ‘SALE’, ‘20% Off’, and similar signs that were displayed around the shop.”

Diversify & Develop

Mindful of changing market conditions, Michael saw a need to diversify A.S. Handover’s range of products. This included expanding into brushes for grainers, marblers, and other specialist decorators, and the addition of tools and specialist paints such as the long-established Ratcliffe’s Oil Glaze.

At that time, J.T. Keep (owned by Bollom’s) had a virtual monopoly in the sign painting paint market. (While many sign painters used Keep’s paint, they tended to opt for Handover brushes versus the Rekab ones sold by J.T. Keep.) It was therefore a bold move to bring a new paint onto the market, but that’s exactly what Michael did. He’d identified a high-quality American lead-based sign painting enamel by the name of 1 Shot, and had an “extremely positive” response after sending out a large number of samples.

Despite changes to the formula, including the removal of lead and other ‘active ingredients’, 1 Shot “continued to be a favourite of signwriters, poster writers and pinstripers”. Towards the end of the 1990s, a fire at the Bollom’s factory took the Keep’s brand off the market, helping to cement 1 Shot’s dominant position. A.S. Handover was, and still is, its main distributor in the UK and Europe.

_{Cannisters, tools and a specifications card for precisely measuring and trimming hairs for A.S. Handover brushes.
The cannisters are known as ‘canons’, as they are often fashioned from gun shell casings.}

Stronger Together

A.S. Handover’s continued growth resulted in it buying up two smaller brushmakers. One of these was H J Goody, “the ‘fine hair’ part of Hamilton & Co., who at the time [1987] were the ‘Rolls Royce’ of brushes in the UK”. The other was LP Brushes whose founder, Czech brushmaker Paul Lesak, was retiring.

Edward Mason Ltd. remained a friendly competitor on the brushmaking front, and both firms were conscious of “an increasing flow of inexpensive brushes from China and the Far East where wages were substantially lower than the UK”. Technological changes were also having an impact on their client bases: “skilled artists and craftsmen being replaced and superseded by computers in graphic art, illustration, litho printing, signwriting, and poster writing to name but a few”, says Michael.

The response in each firm’s case was to “concentrate efforts on the quality, rather than quantity, end of the market”. Everything remained hand-made, with the only machines being those required to crimp the metal ferrule to the wooden handle and to stamp the company name onto the handle.

Also during this period, investments were made in the development of synthetic hairs to the point where they are now “of a quality which is almost, but not quite, as good as the natural hair they are replacing”.

The brushmakers themselves were mainstays of both companies, with many of Edward Mason’s staff continuing with the company until their retirement. Handover’s first brushmaker continued until her death in 1985, and her daughter was still working for the company until her own death four years ago. It was the imminent retirement of Edward Mason’s daughter that led to the merger of the two firms: “With no family members wanting to carry on the business on, they contacted me, and the two operations became one”.

_{Until recently A.S. Handover shared these premises
in Farleigh Place, Stoke Newington, London, with the Jackson’s art supplies shop.}

The Modern Era

The quality of A.S. Handover products was ‘rubber-stamped’ in 2012 when they applied for, and received, a Royal Warrant for the supply of materials for use on the Queen’s state coaches. The firm had been supplying the Royal Mews with paint and materials for many years before this and the warrant conveyed this relationship to the outside world.

As the firm counts down to its centenary, changes are once again afoot. In 2022, after 42 years in charge, Michael sold 75% of the shares to an employee-owned trust. This means that “the staff can run the company in their own best interest and that any profits benefit the people working there at the time”. It is a remarkable legacy to leave to the “team of highly skilled and motivated people who continue to produce high quality brushes in a wide range of weird and wonderful shapes—as well as the standard pointed artist brush of course!”

Written by Sam Roberts / bl.ag

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A.S. Handover / @ashandover

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