Join collector and curator Teresa Collenette and explore the fascinating world of scissors through a patchwork of images and tales.
Do you know where your scissors are? Humble everyday objects that are frequently overlooked, scissors are often more noticeable by their absence than their presence. Silently they lie, forgotten, dormant at the back of a cluttered drawer or the bottom of an overflowing sewing basket until their services are required. As two individual blades, scissors are unremarkable but when they are joined together, they become a technological tour de force with a double life simultaneously creative and destructive.
A universal and democratic tool that empowers us all to perform an array of tasks from the ordinary to the extraordinary, scissors are also objects surrounded by superstition, symbolism and myth. Enter the world of scissors and tumble down a fascinating rabbit hole where you will discover that scissors are so much more than a functional inanimate object. Referencing her personal collection of scissors and related objects, Teresa Collenette will share snippets and tales that will ensure you never see scissors in the same light again.
This is a recording of the online event, The Secret Life of Scissors – Tales of the Unexpected, which originally took place on Thursday 29 April 2021 via Microsoft Teams.
About the speaker
Teresa Collenette is assistant curator of Kaffe Fassett: The Power of Pattern. She is a design historian specialising in the history of scissors. A graduate of the Royal College of Art/Victoria and Albert Museum History of Design Masters programme, she has worked on a number of Fashion and Textile Museum exhibitions including The World of Anna Sui, Liberty in Fashion, 1920s Jazz Age, T-Shirt: Cult Culture Subversion, and Beautiful People: The Boutique in 1960s Counterculture, both in house and on tour.