TO HAVE A REPUTATION

Anyone who knows me well knows my love of scissors. I simply love them and I feel happy just looking at pictures of scissors. I think they are one of the most beautiful and most useful things ever invented! I'm not afraid of scissors at all 😀 When I was small, I had a reputation for cutting shapes with unlikely exactness. Unsurprising, given my love for the thing!

You can, of course, imagine my joy when I found these illustrations in the book The Embroiderer's Story. So lovely! It says that, in Elizabethan times, metalwork centers like Toledo and Cordova produced scissors especially for embroidery and shears for cutting fabrics. Wow! How I wish I worked in a center like that 😎

Sometimes scissors can have negative connotations. For the Ancient Greeks, the last of the Fates, Atropos (Άτροπος), is the one that cuts the thread of life. So, at the Fates table (special meal given three days after a birth, to placate the fates) no scissors or knives are allowed. The life of the baby is hoped to be long. The Fates table survived in Christianity as the table for Virgin Mary. Cool! 😎

The book The Embroiderer's Story is by Thomasina Beck. It's a fantastic history of embroidery. I bought it second hand because it is out of print.

Scissors are, for me, elegant and connected with femininity- embroidery, sewing, trimming. They have a bit of magic, too, like all things beautiful! 😀💝💖💋❤️
#scissors #Greece #Fates #embroidery #beauty #femininity #books#Spain #TheLipstickPapers #VirginMary