I call these my “Hans Christian Andersen scissors.” Everyone knows
that Andersen wrote fairy tales. His complete collection of fairy tales
is on my bookshelf, but I have to confess I have not yet read the book
from cover to cover. It’s a huge book and includes many classics such
as “The Little Mermaid,” “The Ugly Duckling,” “Thumbelina,” “The
Steadfast Tin Soldier,” “The Princess and the Pea,” and “The Emperor’s
New Clothes.” What most people don’t know is that Andersen was also a
master paper cutter. Andersen never explained in any of his writings
how he became so skilled at paper cutting. In fact, he rarely mentions
his cuttings at all.
Andersen grew up as the only son of a poor
shoemaker. He lived in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Denmark in
the early 1800s. His father was intelligent and imaginative, however,
and provided Hans a childhood full of folk tales and paper puppets. A
few times they saved enough money to be able to take Hans to a theatre
to see a play. Hans and his father would then come home and make a
paper stage, paper puppets and a paper costume wardrobe. Making this
paper puppets was Andersen’s first experience with paper cutting art.
After a trying to become an actor during his early teen years, he was
told he did not have enough talent to make it in show business and he
should be a writer instead. A very generous patron volunteered to
provide funds to further his education, and at age 17 he went back to
school. He went on to college, and during that time began his writing
career. He began by writing plays and poetry. Then he tried his hand at
re-writing some traditional folks tales and had enough success to make
him brave enough to try writing some of this own tales.
One of
the first tales we wrote was called “Little Ida’s Flowers.” A little
girl named Ida had asked him what had happened to her bouquet of flowers
overnight. They had been so beautiful the day before and now they were
wilted. So Andersen make up a story about the flowers had been out
dancing all night and tired themselves out. In this story, one of the
characters makes a paper cutting to amuse the little girl.
Though
Andersen’s dream of being a professional actor never came true, he
found an even better outlet for his creative entertaining talent. He
would give private performances for small audiences, and would make a
paper cutting while he told a tale. He would chop away at a folded
piece of paper using an enormous pair of scissors the entire time he was
telling the story. Then, at the end of the story, he would open the
paper and show his audience the design he had created. A Danish woman
wrote this of her childhood memory of Andersend doing his paper
cutting: “He would always cut with an enormous pair of scissors. It
was a mystery to me how he could cut out such dainty things with his big
hands and those enormous scissors!”
Andersen’s reputation as an
amazing entertainer reached the ears of those in high society. Soon he
was getting invitations to the homes of barons and dukes. Eventually
there was hardly a night when he didn’t have an invitation somewhere.
This was fortunate because though Andersen loved children, he never
married and therefore never had any children of his own. He would sit
for hours telling stories and cutting paper designs for the children of
his well-born friends. (He even stayed with Charles Dickens in England
for five weeks. The language barrier was a problem, but Andersen used
his paper cuttings as a bridge that didn’t need words.) Some guests’
homes made Andersen feel especially comfortable and he always referred
to these homes as “good cutting-out places.”
Andersen never
sketched out his figures first. He would just fold the paper and start
cutting. Most of his works are simple pieces of symmetry, where he
folded the paper just once. Occasionally he would fold the paper twice
and make a four-fold pattern.
I got my Andersen scissors at a
garage sale quite a few years ago. I believe them to be a relic from
the days of cut-and-paste editing. If you’ve got a job that requires a
lot of cutting, you can’t waste time with a medium-sized pair of
scissors. These blades let you slice a sheet of paper in half almost in
one snip. Though old, these scissors qualify under the category of
“they don’t make them like they used to,” and, accordingly, they have
not become dull as quickly as the other scissors I own. (Hmm... I’ll
have to try making a paper cutting with them some time.)
