Black and grey engraved flash of barbershop tools, including a straight razor, scissors, a barber chair and a shaving brush, on a distressed wall background.

Barbershop tools flash sheet

Black and grey · Flash

Four circular engraved designs stack vertically, each showing a barbershop tool: a straight razor with blades, a comb with scissors, a barber chair, and a shaving brush beside an aftershave bottle. Each motif has dense hatched linework, with small inset circles showing close-up details and Spanish script labels such as La Navaja, La Tijera, La Silla and La Brocha. The sheet is rendered only in black and grey, set against a worn brick-like texture.

Scissors Script lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every night after the last tram had gone, Tomás Riera pulled down the shutter of his shop on the Carrer del Carme and took the tools out of their drawers, because that was when the city came to be shaved. Dockers still smelling of coal sat in the leather chair, and so did a tailor with ink on his cuffs and a priest who never said why he came so late. Tomás worked under one bulb and charged only what a man could afford.

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The straight razor, La Navaja, was the oldest of them and the proudest. Its blade could split a hair lengthwise and it liked everyone to know it. The comb, El Peine, said nothing at all but kept count of every head it passed through. The scissors, La Tijera, were quick and sharp-tongued and argued with the razor about who was the real master of the shop. The brush, La Brocha, was soft and patient and had lathered the faces of three generations.

One night a stranger came in after midnight, and Tomás saw the chair was already warm though nobody had sat in it. The stranger lifted his chin without speaking. When Tomás reached for the razor it was no longer on the tray. It lay open on the marble, its edge turned towards the door, as if to say the man had come to be told the truth before he was shaved.

Tomás sat down opposite the empty chair and waited. When the bells struck four he found the towel folded on the counter, still damp, and the four tools laid side by side in a neat row, each one pointing at the chair.