Products | Mason Pearson MASON PEARSON , founder-engineer-inventor, went from Yorkshire, Northern England to London in the mid 1860's to work at the British Steam Brush Works, in London’s East End, in a partnership later known as Raper Pearson and Gill. The business was in general small-brushmaking. The brushes were made by hand. Mason Pearson invented an automatic brush-boring machine to speed up the whole process of brushmaking in 1885, for which he won a Silver Medal at the International Inventions Exhibition in London in that year. In the same year he invented the "pneumatic" rubber-cushion hairbrush. It took until 1905 to improve his technique, much of which was still required to be done by hand. His widow continued the business on her own for a further 20 years, when the next generation was ready to take its part.