In the US.....it's still possible to find hand-made brushes. But for the most part....you'd have to go online and order it via some Amazon-like commerce deal.
In Germany......most communities still have a small shop in existence that sells hand-made brushes. You might have to travel an hour to get to the shop.....but such shops still exist.
The quantity of such brushes? I spent fifteen minutes recently in such a shop, and probably counted well over 1,000 different types of brushes. The guy had his brush-shop in the back, and put in x-number of hours a day making them.....and the wife ran the front side of the shop.....selling what the customers asked for. I will admit....nothing was cheap. Quality-wise? I'd take a humble guess that most of the handmade items lasted twice as long as the plastic or cheaper items that you purchase normally.
A remarkable survival rate? Yes. If you ask me.....I'd take a guess that barely ten-percent of German society makes it a priority to settle for handmade brushes. I doubt if the handmade shops are flourishing that much, and probably just accept marginal profit as part of their business strategy.
The curious thing here is that it was the "norm" if you went back a hundred years ago. Every significant town in Germany had a brush-dealer who made his own brushes. People took care of their brushes, and they lasted a decade or two. It's different now.....things are cheap enough that you wouldn't get all fussy if you threw away a brush that you bought two years ago for three Euro.
Just one of those oddball things you come to note of German culture.
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