Ezekiel of Bible fame said “Son of man, take thee a sharp knife, take thee a barber’s razor, and cause it to pass upon thine head and upon thine beard” because he thought regular shaves and haircuts were a good idea. And like all good sons do, the son of man listened and then there were barber shops.

The barber was a respected member of society, so much so that the practice of his craft extended below the neck. Barbers also functioned as surgeons when the Catholic Church forbade doctors from performing certain surgeries. Services provided by Barbers included blood-letting, to counter the ill effects of an “overbalance” of the blood and tooth-pulling. Blood-letting was common practice. George Washington actually died of shock, in combination with a few other things, after his physician performed a blood-letting to treat an infected windpipe.

During a typical blood-letting, the patient would hold onto a pole so that the veins in their arms would be more pronounced, and easier for the barber to find come slicing time. Post-surgery, the bloody bandages were hung wrapped around that pole to dry outside. The flapping of the bandages around the pole formed a spiral pattern similar to the spiral recognized on the barber’s pole today. The pole and bandages, and later a pole painted in that fashion, signaled to passers-by that such services were available at that particular shop and later came to symbolize just plain barbering sans surgery.
In our quest for the origins of the barber pole, we came across a number of interesting facts.

Did you know that in South Korea, a single Barber’s Pole indicates there is a massage parlor located in the building and if there is a double Barber’s Pole, this indicates that the massage parlor provides “extra service”.

When speaking of barber poles, one cannot neglect to mention the evidence suggesting that Jack the Ripper’s true identity was actually that of a Polish Barber named Aaron Kosminski.

Today there is only one remaining manufacturer of barber poles in North America. In January 1950, William Marvy, a former barber pole salesman dissatisfied with the quality of the product he was pushing, opened his own factory. At the time, about five other barber pole manufacturers existed in the United States, but this would change with the Marvy’s introduction of the “Six Ways Better Pole”. With a shatterproof lucite shell, non-rust stainless-steel castings, and a plastic inner cylinder, Marvy’s poles proved far superior to their cast iron predecessors. That difference would ultimately put the competition out of business making the William Marvy Company, now run by Marvy’s son Robert, the sole remaining manufacturer of barber poles in North America.

We figured Robert Marvy would be the man to call. Marvy likes to refer interested customers to the history compiled by Harry Perelman. http://wmmarvyco.com/fr_scrpbk.htm

As for the future of the barber pole, Marvy maintains that the trade-symbol fixture is not going anywhere. People know what the spiraling lines mean worldwide, from England, to Italy, to the Far East. A gradual decrease in demand, possibly beginning with the hairy hippy generation, has Marvy’s 14 person staff producing about 700 poles a year (the biggest year for production was 1967 when a whopping 51,000 poles were made), but Marvy maintains that “business is holding up pretty well.”

The William Marvy Company has fulfilled custom orders in the past, even making a pole with poodles for a pet groomer, and more recently he’s gotten requests for poles from breweries in Belgium and Amsterdam. They also make a killing with other barber shop products like sanitizers, combs and chairs. When it comes to furnishing your barber shop, the go-to guys are at the William Marvy Company. For barber poles, they’re the only guys you can go to.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 8:00 am and is filed under History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.