Brillo Pad
Trade name for a scouring pad made from soap-filled steel wool
title: "Brillo Pad" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["cleaning-products", "products-introduced-in-1913"] description: "Trade name for a scouring pad made from soap-filled steel wool" topic_path: "general/cleaning-products" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brillo_Pad" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Trade name for a scouring pad made from soap-filled steel wool ::
::data[format=table title="infobox brand"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Brillo |
| logo | File:Brillo Logo.jpg |
| type | Scouring pad |
| currentowner | Armaly Brands |
| origin | U.S. |
| introduced | 1913 |
| previousowners | Brillo Manufacturing Company (1913–1962), Purex Industries, Inc. (1962–1985), The Dial Corporation (1985–1997), Church & Dwight (1997–2010) |
| tagline | Now that's brilliant! |
| website | |
| :: |
| name = Brillo | logo = File:Brillo Logo.jpg | image = | caption = | type = Scouring pad | currentowner = Armaly Brands | origin = U.S. | introduced = 1913 | discontinued = | related = | markets = | previousowners = Brillo Manufacturing Company (1913–1962), Purex Industries, Inc. (1962–1985), The Dial Corporation (1985–1997), Church & Dwight (1997–2010) | trademarkregistrations = | ambassadors = | tagline = Now that's brilliant! | website =
Brillo is a trade name for a scouring pad, used for cleaning dishes, and made from steel wool filled with soap. The concept was patented in 1913, at a time when aluminium pots and pans were replacing cast iron in the kitchen; the new cookware blackened easily. The company's website states the name Brillo is from the Latin 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.{{cite web |title=Brillo: A History of Cleaning |publisher=Church and Dwight |year=2008 |url=http://www.brillo.com/crelations/history.asp |accessdate=2009-04-24 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090326063553/http://www.brillo.com/crelations/history.asp |archivedate=2009-03-26
Demand for the steel wool, copper spun and soap with jewellers' rouge increased quickly. The peddler and the jeweller decided to patent the product.
By 1917, the company was selling packaged boxes of six pads, with a cake of soap included. During World War I, 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, 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
::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Brillo_soap_pads.JPG" caption="Brillo pads"] ::
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 in 1964. Warhol did artwork on boxes with the 1960s Brillo logo.
In 1970 Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova published a short story about a robot policeman titled "Brillo". The title was a pun by Bova as a robot policeman could be referred to as metal fuzz.
References
References
- (28 January 1972). "Milton Loeb, Lawyers Who Began Brillo Corporation, Is Dead at 84". The New York Times.
- (10 July 1997). "Dial sells brands to Church & Dwight". Phoenix Business Journal.
- Walsh, Dustin. (15 March 2010). "Walled Lake sponge maker buys Brillo brand". Crain's Detroit Business.
- Boji, John. (January 20, 2020). "Brillo Basics and Innovative Brands.... a glowing new partnership". LinkedIn.
- "Brillo by Harlan Ellison, Ben Bova".
- Ellison, Harlan. (1980). "Tomorrow".
::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::