Rosemary & Co Brush Review

I have been using the Rosemary and Co. brushes for about a month now.  started off with the series 401 Sable Blend hoping for the best of both worlds. The extra quality and wear of Sable with the lower price points of, well anything else. Price point wise these are on the surface a great brush. They hold paint well and keep a point and when they do seem to splay just a quick dip in the water pot and a suck and twist of the brush and the hairs are back in place. Sounds a match made in heaven.

Kolinsky Sable top three. Bottom three are Sable Blend.

Well possibly, but as you will see from the photos the brush has a very annoying habit of curling at the tip. A closer view is below. The brush itself is lighter than the series 33 Kolinsky Sable as I suspect they use a different wood in the handle. It really is a shame the brush can't stop from curling, yes for me it's too light but that aside it would be a good brush except for this one fault. I am sure for other than miniature figure painting it does the job well. However I bought three of the Kolinsky Sable (originally one)  to see how much better the posh brush was. Well I have painted with the Ser. 33 brushes far more than the Blended Ser. 401 and have been far more impressed. Not only does the brush hold the paint well allowing less trips to the paint but it needs less tweaks to keep the point well dressed but no sign of curling of the point. The 10/0 has a habit of the whole bristle head being pushed to an angle from use but returns to a central position with a quick suck and twist (I say Vicar).  See below for a close up.

The sizes from top to bottom 10/0, 3/0, 2/0, 3/0, 2/0 and 1. As you can see I have zoomed in really close and no sign of curl on the Ser. 33 but a fairly pronounced curl on the less used and cheaper Ser. 401. I guess you simply get what you pay for in this case. Of course these need a lot more use than they have had to this point to prove that they are indeed the best brush for the money spent. I obviously have not compared them to Winsor & Newton top brushes but would only be too happy to do so if they want to send me a few to try ;-)

 

It's a shame about the Ser. 33 as that would have been a fantastic result but really I am happy with the results that seem to be coming from Ser. 33. Give me another month or two of hard working of the brushes and if they are still standing up to the work then  will be a very happy bunny. The Creative Models triangular brush always kept it's point for me but the bristles wore down at a fairly quick pace so I tended to carry on using them way past becoming the 10/0 size of brush!

 

Price wise Series 33 starts at £3.40 for size10/0 and goes up to £325 for the size 22! Relax though the largest most of us would want is the size 1 at £3.70 Due to my findings I will be offering the Series 33 brushes in the give away and not the 401's originally stated.