Robin Lattimore writes of being a fifteen year old in 1964, when he joined the team of fourteen brush-makers. He says, “The brushes were made by securing the bristles to the brush heads by wire, but the main brush-making took place down stairs. There there were four square tables, each with a hooded, steaming cauldron of boiling pitch at its centre. A light focused on this scary substance, and the smoke was partly sucked out of the building by a rattling, wheezing fan which struggled from 8am to 5.15pm five days a week.”
Protective clothing in the brush department was no more than a pair of dungarees and a leather apron, though there was a step in the cauldron to prevent workers from putting their uncovered fingers too near the pitch. Worse than the relentless heat and imminent danger was the tour parties of visitors, “particularly those who stood a little distance away and spoke in loud voices about how wonderful we were, and what [poor creatures] we all were.”
Robin spent nine years making brushes and regards the move of premises from Huntly Street to a purpose built factory in Tullos in 1973 as the end of the brush-making team. The fumes and workers with tar-spattered clothes were no use in the open-plan building beside the upholstery so the team was disbanded and went to work in other departments.
