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I'm glade someone here got that old case - I was bidding on it and then it disappeared. Last year I got one probably from a similar time period:

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What is the source / age of the last...

Here's another, from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, mid-1600s.

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Here is more info on them. They were commissioned by Phillip II from an art dealer Philipp Hainhofer in the 17th century, and filled with many interesting objects, including shaving equipment. There...

This is a common feature on a lot of the depictions of the older ones.

There are enough examples that I think it was just a stylistic thing that occurred sometimes.

12-15th century, Museum of London:

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Late 1600s:

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Neither are curved scales!

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Here are some more. First one, from a series Bücher und Schriften, of a man holding a "Schermesser" (a shaving razor), from versions from 1591 and 1603. The accompanying text is unambiguous in...

Maybe you can find something useful in the section on De Scheermessemaker? Link here, pg. 235:...

Now I can't find the book that I was referencing. (The illustration appears in a number of books). I did find this one though. From "Eygentliche Beschreibung Aller Stände", Hans Sachs, Frankfurt,...

I had tried reading the text that accompanied this woodcut. It's in an old form of German, so was difficult to make out, but I gave up after pages and pages of biblical and religious rambling.
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More, this time from barbers' bowls.

c. 1720:

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1706:

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Here's a real one, I think posted elsewhere on SRP but putting it here for completeness.

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I'd been wondering what the average razor from the 1600s looked like, and it turns out there are actually a lot of sources for images of them. Some are from manufacturers' trade cards (which can be a...