Brillo is a trade name for a scouring pad, used for

cleaning Cleaning is the process of removing unwanted substances, such as dirt, infectious agents, and other impurities, from an object or environment. Cleaning is often performed for aesthetic, hygienic, functional, environmental, or safety purposes. ...

dishes, and made from steel wool impregnated with

soap Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used in a variety of cleansing and lubricating products. In a domestic setting, soaps are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are us ...

. The concept was patented in 1913, at a time when

aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It ha ...

pots and pans were replacing

cast iron Cast iron is a class of iron– carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impuri ...

in the kitchen; the new cookware blackened easily. The company's website states the name Brillo is from the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

word for "bright", although no such word exists in Latin. In Spanish the word ''brillo'' means the noun "shine"; however, German, Italian, French, and English do have words for "shine" or "bright" beginning with ''brill-'' deriving from Latin words for beryl.

History

In the early 1900s, in New York, an unnamed cookware peddler and his brother-in-law, an unnamed jeweller, were working on a solution to clean blackened cookware. Using jewellers' rouge, with soap and fine steel wool from Germany, they developed a method to scour the backsides of cooking utensils when they began to blacken. The method worked and the peddler added this new product, soap with steel wool, into his line of goods for sale. Demand for the steel wool, copper spun and soap with jewellers' rouge increased quickly. The peddler and the jeweller decided to patent the product. Because they lacked the money to pay for legal services, they offered New York attorney Milton Loeb an interest in their business. Loeb accepted and in 1913, he secured a patent for the product under the name Brillo. The partnership formed between the peddler, the jeweller and the attorney became known as the Brillo Manufacturing Company, with headquarters and production operations in New York City. By 1917, the company was selling packaged boxes of six pads, with a cake of soap included. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, it helped with needed efforts of field operations. In 1921, the company moved its production facility to London, Ohio. It was only in the 1930s that soap was contained within the pad. The company merged with Purex Industries in 1962. The Dial Corporation acquired Purex Industries in 1985. Church and Dwight acquired the Brillo business from Dial in 1997. In 2010, Armaly Brands of Walled Lake, Michigan, primarily a manufacturer of

sponges Sponges, the members of the phylum Porifera (; meaning 'pore bearer'), are a basal animal clade as a sister of the diploblasts. They are multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through t ...

, purchased the Brillo business from Church & Dwight. At that time there were about 50 employees, down from a high of about 150 in the 1990s.

Production

Brillo is manufactured in London, Ohio.

Brillo Basics

In December 2019, Innovative Brands, a division of International Wholesale, agreed to a licensing agreement with Armaly Brands to launch Brillo Basics, a line of household cleaning products.

In art

The most famous example of Brillo in pop art is works by

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

in 1964. Warhol did artwork on boxes with the 60's Brillo logo. Much like Warhol's Campbell soup piece, the Brillo piece has since been gaining a cult following since the piece was displayed at an art show called ''Legends: Warhol/Basquiat '' through November 8- 10 of 2019 in the Shanghai International Artwork Trade and through November 16-23 of 2019 in Sotheby's Hong Kong Gallery. Artist MADASKI subverted the works of Warhol in his ''If I Had A Dream'' exhibition with Pollock-graffiti like textures. {{Cite news, title=MADSAKI Subverts Iconic Andy Warhol Artworks in "If I Had a Dream" Exhibition, url=https://hypebeast.com/2019/7/madsaki-perrotin-solo-exhibition-hong-kong-recap, last=Estiler, first=Keith, date=July 17, 2019, access-date=March 20, 2020, work=Hypebeast

References

External links