Scissor Sword: Scissor Maven Grace Horne’s Prized Collectable

Grace Horne makes what, for her especially, is the buy of a lifetime.

Scissors-making maven Grace Horne scored a find of a lifetime recently when she obtained the antique Scissor Sword made in 1851 by George Oates of Sheffield, England.

A Sheffield native, Grace thought she had lost out on the one-of-a-kind piece when someone else bought it after her computer crashed halfway through an auction of David Hayden-Wright’s collection of historical British knives in 2023.However, a dealer contacted her this past spring with a picture of the piece asking if she had ever seen it. Grace of course had, asked who owned it, contacted the owner and bought it from him at BLADE Show 2024.

The sword was made especially for London’s iconic 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition and is in Wright’s book, The Heritage of English Knives. In part, Wright wrote the sword was “conceived to represent two completely different visual images, one an elegant diamond tapering blade flat hilted court sword … the other an exceptionally large pair of attractive display tailor’s scissors … The long split blades form a diamond section with closing catch piece at the tip, each has foliate blued panels highlighted by the mirror polished steel, the steel ribbed ricasso forming the concealed hinge.

The split inner blade faces with white frost etched floral panels and the scrolled legend, ‘Manufactured by – George Oates – Sheffield.’” We seriously doubt Grace and the Scissor Sword will part company anytime soon.

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