Six hands.
Six separate books.

Nadia opened the floor in 2015 with one chair and a rule she has never broken: the drawing is finished before the date is offered. Her work is large ornamental blackwork built to the body’s own geometry — sternums, spines, the outside of a thigh — and it is drawn in negative space as much as in ink.

She quotes above the studio floor and says so at the enquiry, not at the consult. Roughly one enquiry in four gets sent to another resident because the piece wants a different hand; she considers that part of the job rather than a lost booking.

Solomon draws fine line and lettering, which is the hardest thing in the room to do honestly — thin work moves as skin ages, and he will tell you where and by how much before you sit rather than after. Script is set by hand, never typed out of a font file, and he sets it at the size it will be worn.

He is the resident most likely to talk you into something smaller than you asked for. He is also the only one who will refuse a placement on the grounds that the ink will not hold there in five years, which costs the studio money and is exactly why he is on the floor.

Juno works neo-traditional: heavy outline, a closed palette, and shapes that stay legible from three metres away in ten years’ time. She trained in Bologna and still draws every piece on paper first, at scale, in graphite before anything is digitised.

Most first-timers at Ironhand end up in her chair, and she books a half day more often than anyone else on the floor. She will tell you plainly when a piece wants to be smaller and cheaper than you came in expecting.

Ash does large-scale blackout and heavy coverage — full sleeves, backs, and the kind of multi-day project that is booked as consecutive days across months rather than as a single appointment. Their book runs the longest on the floor because a single client can occupy eight days of it.

The book is closed until June and no deposit is taken while it is closed. You can join the waitlist and you will get a real date or a plain no — Ash does not carry an open-ended list, and anyone still on it after two rounds of dates is told so.

Théo works in an etching and engraving register — cross-hatch, stipple, and the line weights of a printing plate rather than of a tattoo. He came to the floor from ten years of intaglio printmaking and still cuts test plates for the larger pieces before a needle is opened.

His book runs twelve weeks and he takes fewer pieces per month than anyone else here, because hatch density has to be drawn line by line rather than filled. He will quote the session count honestly, which is usually one more than clients hope.

Cover-ups and reworks are most of Wren’s book and all of her reputation. She takes the pieces other studios turn down, and she is the reason people travel to Oranienstraße from outside Berlin. Send daylight photographs with no filter, plus what the piece is and roughly when it was done.

She will also tell you when something cannot be covered. Some ink is too dark, too dense or too recent, and the honest answer is laser first and come back in a year — which is what she says several times a month instead of selling a black square.