Ernest Wright& Son

Ernest Wright has made scissors and shears by hand in Sheffield since 1902 — the 'putters', the craftspeople who join and finish each pair, working steel the way the city's cutlery trade always did. Family-run for five generations, it went into receivership in 2018 and was saved by two new owners, Paul Jacobs and Jan-Bart Fanoy, who kept the craft and the makers rather than the machines. It won the Heritage Crafts Association's first President's Award for Endangered Crafts in 2020, and it is one of the last places on earth making scissors this way. In the city that gave the world 'Sheffield steel', it is the real, endangered thing.