Ernest Wright keeps Sheffield's endangered craft of scissor making alive

In a workshop on Broad Lane, scissors are still made by hand in the way Sheffield has made them for generations. Ernest Wright has been making scissors and shears in the city since 1902, and today it is one of the very last firms practising a craft the Heritage Crafts Association rates as critically endangered.

The company was founded by Ernest Wright, who lived from 1880 to 1954 and whose father, Walter Wright, was a Sheffield scissor finisher. The Kutrite trade name followed in 1954, and by 1977, the firm's 75th anniversary year, it employed more than 80 workers and exported to 45 countries.

There have been difficult times. The business went into receivership in 1988 and was saved by a distant relative, and later passed to Philip Wright and then Nick Wright. After Nick Wright died in 2018, two backers of an earlier Kickstarter campaign, Paul Jacobs and Jan Bart Fanoy, bought the assets from the receiver and set about a revival. Long-time employee Pam Addy was brought back, and the master-putters, Eric and Cliff, kept the skills alive.

The craft takes real dedication. The title of scissor putter-togetherer is earned after a five-year apprenticeship, and several apprentice putters were taken on after 2018. Sam Clark became the first trainee of the current era to qualify fully as a putter, and according to the Heritage Crafts Association the company has now trained five makers.

Recognition has followed. In 2020 Ernest Wright won the inaugural Heritage Crafts Association President's Award for Endangered Crafts. In August 2021 the famous Kutrite kitchen scissors returned, and the company bought 58 Broad Lane, renaming it Kutrite Works.

The range covers kitchen scissors, embroidery and quilting scissors, dressmaker and tailor shears, bookbinder's and paper hanger's scissors and garden scissors, with left-handed versions where listed. Orders are made in small batches, which can take up to 12 weeks, a sign of how much care goes into every pair.

Sheffield was once home to around twenty scissor-making firms, and by 1990 only two remained. That makes every pair leaving Kutrite Works something worth celebrating.

Ernest Wright's scissors and shears can be ordered through its website, and the workshop is at Kutrite Works, 58 Broad Lane, Sheffield S1 4BT.