Ernest Wright has been making professional quality scissors and shears since the early 1900s, and the company’s craftspeople who are known as ‘putters’ and ‘master-putters’, are among just a few people in the UK who are trained in traditional scissor making skills, such as marrying blades together and flexible grinding using abrasive belts. Six younger putters are currently learning the craft of making scissors by hand while the most senior artisans on the team, Cliff Denton and Eric Stones, have over 120 years’ combined experience in the scissor making industry.

In 2018, after some challenging decades for the scissor industry, Ernest Wright was taken over by two entrepreneurial enthusiasts, who recognised that the fate of the company would be crucial to the survival of traditional scissor making itself. At the time of its founding in 1902, Ernest Wright was in fact one of over 100 companies making scissors in Sheffield, whilst today, it’s the only company remaining in the city centre that uses traditional methods to make scissors and shears by hand.