Earlier this year, I saw Salomé at the Teatro del Maggio. The weird teenager dances for King Herod, removing her seven veils in return for the severed head of John the Baptist before making love to the dead head, kissing its cooling lips. All this leaves a bitter taste in the mouth and, as a way of coming to terms with the horror, I went for a haircut at Sultano Barba & Capelli in Tavarnelle Val di Pesa. Upon entering the barber’s shop, this is what I saw…
The “severed head” was mounted on a metal bracket with Corinna giving it a trim before shaving off the beard; no kissing. She told me to relax, explaining that she had recently completed an apprentice barber’s course, learning to shave a man’s face using a cut-throat razor. The final proof of skill, necessary for the diploma, was to lather an inflated balloon and then shave off the foam. If the balloon pops, she fails. To complete her training, “severed heads” are delivered to the barber’s shop, where she refines her technical skills with no risk to anyone. Her grandfather, Giorgio Turchi, was the master barber in Tavarnelle Val di Pesa until he was nearly 80. In 2004, his son, Roberto, a famous competitive motorcyclist, took over, elevating his nickname “the Turk” to Sultano. Catering for young, old, rich and poor alike, the shop became a meeting place for the men of the town, a centre of informal democracy where Corinna first learned to cut and shave. She will soon be ready to carry on the artisan tradition into the third generation.
I already knew the family because Maria Theresa, Corinna’s mother, had solved a problem with my ear some five years ago. There was blood on my pillow every morning, my ear was painful to touch. I had had minor surgery and my doctor was no help at all, telling me that it often happened and would soon get better. I believed him at first, but after two months of pain and bloody pillows, I began to have doubts about how often he looked at ears. So, I asked Roberto for a second opinion. He seemed the ideal person as he, like all barbers, spends all day looking at the tops of ears. He said mine was inflamed and called his wife, who, after a thorough inspection, discovered a blue nylon stitch that the surgeon had left behind. Removal solved the problem, and I gained both relief and a friend.
Barbers are not just hair cutters, but artisans, working with their hands to create a neater, cleaner, more beautiful version of their clients’ heads. They cannot be replaced by machines and in Corinna’s family it was heartwarming to see the skills being handed down at a time when Florentine craftspeople are disappearing. It made up for a recent sadness when I bought many metres of wood for frames from an artisan who was shutting down his bottega near Santo Spirito. He was a fourth-generation artigiano, but there was no one in his family to take over. I was moved by this example of artisan survival and asked Corinna to educate me. This is what I learned.
Barbers have been shaving men’s faces for at least 10,000 years, for practical as well as aesthetic reasons. Alexander the Great insisted that his soldiers were clean-shaven so the enemy could not grab their beards. The first razors were the sharp edges of seashells or flintstones (used also for circumcisions), then copper, then bronze, iron and, finally, in 1680, steel. The Etruscans preferred a moon-shaped blade to fit the contours of the face, but more usual was the straight-edged cut-throat razor. Given the obvious problem with the cut-throat design, in 1780 Jean-Jacques Perret designed a razor on the same principle as a carpenter’s plane, with the blade protruding very little, and so avoiding deep cuts. Eventually, King Camp Gillette improved the safety razor and invented the two-edged disposable blade, selling millions to the U.S. army during the 1914-18 war, presumably for military aesthetics rather beard grabbing. The competition heated up when Wilkinson made stainless steel blades in a disposable cartridge with a battery-powered vibrator for negligible extra benefit.
In Florence, barbers were part of the Arte dei Medici e degli Speziali guild, alongside doctors and knife makers, although professional rivalry led to a 1349 Florentine statute giving barbers an inferior legal status compared to surgeons. (They were still called in for bloodletting and pulling teeth.) The guild regulated training, jobs, pay and the number of barbers, while in London the barbers and surgeons merged to form the Worshipful Company of Barber Surgeons and built an impressive hall that you can rent for dinners.
Corinna reassures me that, even though her mother diagnosed and cured my ear problem, barbers are no longer allowed to perform surgery, but must be properly taught how to cut hair, shave and style. Most learn as apprentices, cutting the hair and shaving the faces of students for free. There are special schools in Florence for hair cutting, but none remain dedicated to shaving, which is why she ventured to Lucca to learn at the BISB (The Barber Is Back) barber shop. Her certificate reads as follows: Proudly presented as an honourable achievement of a seven-day visual, theoretical and practical course on classic Italian shaving, beard care, old-style sharpening and classic haircuts.
I have seen all her diplomas with supporting documents showing the number of hours spent on each phase of her training, a tribute to the usual Italian mix of perfectionism and bureaucratic excess. She also showed me a recent issue of the barbers’ gazette Accademia Proraso, which explained that my haircut would give me “an impression of courage, authority, nobility, credibility and force of spirit”. Others will have to judge.
I look forward to being her first paying client.
