This is a pair of tweezers used for removing ear wax, which was a service provided by barbers in the 20th century. After the haircut, a pair of tweezers was used to remove wax from the ear cana with the help of light from a bulb shining closely near the ear. Only very skillful barbers could execute this procedure, and even then it would strain their eyes. A fluffy thin brush was used to remove the smaller bits of wax in the ear canal. This was part of a set of hairdressing tools that belonged to Aw Fong Lang, a female barber who was born in Shunde, Guangdong province, China in c.1919 or 1920. Aw came to Singapore at the age of 9 in the 1920s. She took up the skill of hair cutting in her teens. As an apprentice, she might have taken between 6 and 8 months to train as a barber, working 15 hours a day. Initially tasks were menial, before progressing to learn how to shampoo and wash heads and then learning the business of barbering. To gain practical experience, a male employee of the shop would allow the apprentice to ‘experiment’ on his hair. While Aw initially worked in a salon on Hai Lam street run by a Hainanese woman, she later set up her own barber shop at Jalan Besar, near the back entrance of New World (the shop was called Lai Ming/Meng 黎明; dawn in Cantonese). In her shop, Aw trained two of her brother’s daughters as apprentices. Aw retired from her business in the 1970s.
