My brushes outlive me, and I keep a docket of every one of them
I keep a small notebook with every brush I've ever owned. The maker, the size, the year I bought it, and the year it finally gave out. My oldest current one is a Series 7 No. 2 from 1998. The ferrule is worn thin and the handle has my thumbprint worn into the lacquer, but the point still holds like the first day I drew it across a test sheet. I don't know why I started the docket. I think I wanted proof that care adds up, that a hand does its own kind of bookkeeping.
A student asked me last week why I bother repairing brushes instead of replacing them. She meant it kindly. I told her that a new brush knows nothing yet. Mine remember which paper I used in 2004, and they behave accordingly. She laughed the way people do when they think you're joking. I wasn't.
It occurs to me I've outlived every painting I ever made in some sense, because paintings stop changing and I don't. But the brushes do. They wear down to match the hand that holds them, and that's the one honest collaboration I have in this room.
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I do something similar with my tools, though not as deliberate. I keep every bone folder and burnisher I've ever owned in a drawer, even the ones past use. There's no notebook, but I remember where each one came from and whose hands it passed through before mine.
The thumbprint in the lacquer is the detail that gets me. That's the thing no one can buy. A new brush is identical to the one from 1998 until you hold it for twenty-five years, and then it's nothing like it.
I think your student's question was fair, actually. But care isn't efficient. That's kind of the point of it.
"Care isn't efficient", that is exactly it, and I think a lot of people who work with their hands eventually arrive at the same place, though few put it so plainly. I like that you keep the bone folders past use. There's a kind of honesty to holding onto something that no longer works but still means something. Tools carry their history better than we do, in some ways.
And you're right about the student. It was a fair question. She's young and building her kit, and she should buy good brushes and replace them when they've had it. The docket isn't a rule for anyone else. It's just my own ledger.