Built around the chair.
A small shop on Ossington Avenue, restored from a former dry-goods store and built for slow craft. We opened in 2014 with four chairs. Twelve years on, we still keep two of them empty most days.
Twelve years, four hands.
Marcus Vega opened Forge in 2014 after fifteen years cutting in shops across London and Toronto. He had spent the last three of those years apprenticing under Spanish straight-razor masters in a small shop in Madrid, and he came back wanting to build something the city did not yet have.
The room was a former dry-goods store on Ossington. It had been empty for two years when Marcus signed the lease. The walnut floors were under three layers of vinyl. The pressed-tin ceiling was painted over six times. The cast-iron radiators still worked.
We kept the bones and built the chairs around them. Six 1920s Koken frames, rebuilt with new leather and chrome. Antique brass fittings from a closing barbershop in Brooklyn. New brushwork from a Sheffield maker who has supplied razors to this trade for four generations. Everything else was made for this room.
Twelve years on, Forge is the chair Marcus learned on, plus three more chairs and three more barbers, all trained at the master chair before they sat at their own. We are a small shop on purpose. The cut should never be rushed.
The work was passed forward.
- 1948
Mappin & Webb razor, made in Sheffield
Marcus inherited his grandfather's razor. It still cuts. It still sits on the back wall of the master chair, and it still gets stropped on the same horsehide strop every Friday.
- 1999
First apprenticeship
Marcus apprenticed in his uncle's shop in Lisbon at sixteen. He swept the floor for two years before he was allowed to hold the scissors.
- 2011
Madrid, three years
Three years of straight-razor work in Madrid under Diego Marín. Marcus says he is still not as good as Diego was at fifty.
- 2014
Forge opens, Toronto
The first chair installed on a Wednesday. The first cut on the following Friday. The shop has not closed for more than two consecutive days since.
- 2017
Dilan joins
Dilan Ahmed brought his Istanbul training and his fade work to the second chair.
- 2020
Held the lease, kept the team
The shop closed for fourteen weeks in 2020 and reopened with every barber still on the floor. Nothing else to say about that year.
- 2023
Apprentice chair opens
Noor Haddad started the apprentice program in 2023. The walk-in chair has been the shop's busiest seat since.
Come in for a cut.
The door is open Tuesday through Saturday. The kettle is on at the back of the shop. Tea or coffee while you wait.