The neighborhood barbershop provided baths as well as shaves and haircuts. Many of the neighborhood shops were ethnic, providing a haven for the immigrant, where he could be among friends and speak his native language, For many, the early barbershops became a social gathering place, as customers would often visit to be shaved on a daily basis. .
Most of the new immigrants were illiterate. Having a personal shaving mug with a name on it would have been of no value. It may have been an early American barber who first saw the need for a shaving mug with an illustration of a trade design, to provide his customer with a shaving mug he could identify with. By 1880, the major barber shop wholesale distributors all established mug decorating departments, which provided trade design illustrations on shaving mugs. Highly decorative floral and fraternal emblem mugs also started to be produced at this time. .
To provide quality illustrations for the mugs, there was a need for china decorators. Most of the decorators were men who had learned their trade in Europe as trained china painters for the major European porcelain houses. The majority were German or Austrian, and specialized in floral decorations and fine lettering and striping. Some of the earlier known master decorators of shaving mugs were Wilhelm Reidel, who had a flourishing shaving mug decorating business in New York, and was listed in Wilson's New York Business Directory in 1884. William Haehnel, who arrived in this country from Germany in 1889, and took over the business when Reidel died the Barbers' mutual a trade paper of the early 1890's lists J. Holzager "photographer and decorator on china". George Bassett & Co. and Charles Wedell as all working in New York in the shaving mug decorating trade There were also mug decorators working in Saint Louis, Kansas City, and as far afield as San Francisco. At its height the mug decorating trade was so extensive and decorated shaving mugs in such demand, that each of these businesses had several men employed as decorators.