Wick scissors
Wick scissors (also light scissors, wick tongs, light cleaner , light cleaner scissors or Lichtschneuzen ; Latin (singular): Emunctorium from emungere = blow your nose, clean) are specially shaped scissors for shortening a burning candle wick .
functionality
Wick scissors differ from common household scissors in their smaller shape and in their shortened, but significantly wider and sometimes even angled cutting blades, so that the separated piece of wick (the snuff ) does not fall down (possibly into the liquid candle wax), but remains on the scissor blades and is disposed of directly can. Some wick scissors have indentations on the blades for receiving the wick remnants, which can be designed up to richly decorated small boxes.
history
Already in the Old Testament ( Ex 25,38 LUT ) light scissors and fire bowls made of gold are prescribed to keep the seven-armed chandelier clean .
Ordinary candles were made from animal fat ( tallow ) until the beginning of the 19th century and soot and drip the more so the longer the wick became. Therefore, the wicks had to be shortened ("blown") regularly, which required constant work in large rooms, in which sometimes hundreds of candles were burning. There were specialized servants for this purpose at royal courts, and a “comedy light cleaner ” was employed in theaters . Also in churches where numerous liturgical candles had to be tended, light cleaning was a typical activity. In Austria, particularly pious women were even mockingly referred to as “light plasters”.
Only when the stearin and later the paraffin could be made usable for candles did the wicks no longer have to be constantly shortened. The shortening of the candle wick was also necessary later, as it mostly consisted of a thicker, lead-reinforced cotton material with a round profile. Since candle wicks are usually provided with a light fire protection material so that they only conduct wax to the flame , but do not burn themselves, a long burning time for the candle often results in the wax being burnt down a long way, but the wick still being its full length. As a result, the surface that supplies the flame with fuel is very large, and consequently the flame is very high and soot is generated. Since this is neither economical nor particularly aesthetic or safe, the wick is cut down to the desired length, usually about 5 mm.
Nowadays, shortening the wick is no longer necessary on most candles. The paper-reinforced wicks used are mostly woven flat. The end of the wick curls into the flame and burns if it is too long and does not provide enough wax.
As a result, very few households now have real wick cutters, and today wick cutters are typically only used to extinguish candles in a clean way, as a result of a generous shortening of the wick.
Wick scissors as a motif in art and literature
Wick scissors - like candles, candlesticks or candle extinguishers - were depicted in vanitas still lifes in Dutch painting of the 17th and 18th centuries as a symbol of human mortality and impending death.
The dispute over “cleaning candles” with the wick scissors was a proverbial marital conflict, as Jean Paul describes as “Nunciature disputes over Lichtschneuzen” in his novel Siebenkäs (1796–1797).
In memoirs of the late 19th century, the wick cutter appears more often as a symbol for the technically backward time in which the memoir writers experienced their childhood. Adolf Kussmaul (1822–1902) summarized his memory of the plagues of candle lighting in his memoirs in 1899 in the poem “Comfort and Enjoyment”, which ends with the following words:
- Had to go to badly printed poets
- Torment the eyes by the sled lights,
- Cleaned so that it would be light enough
- Diligently clean the wick with the light-cleaning scissors.
The music critic Eduard Hanslick (1825–1904) is particularly reluctant to remember cleaning the lights and compares the wick scissors with an instrument of torture:
- In view of these technical miracles, you involuntarily feel your way back to the time of your own youth, when everything was so completely different! It is not without an effort that we can now visualize how inadequate, cumbersome, and ridiculous one had to make do in the past. While now, thanks to the most splendid of all inventions, we only need to press a button to fill our room with brilliant light, fifty years ago we had to light a candle with matches, which gave off a hideous sulphurous stench. These terrible evil-noses prevailed in the best middle-class families; only wax or milli candles burned on social evenings. Even as a boy I hated an indispensable instrument of torture that stuck out its dirty scissors on every table: the plaster. What agony if she refused the dashing service and gnawed helplessly at the overhanging black wick. The maids usually helped each other by blowing the light with their fingers and laying their sooty prey in the light plaster. Today you can only see this instrument in the historical museum. And yet it wasn't so long ago that Goethe wrote: "I don't know what better way to invent than when the lights burned without cleaning!"
Georg Ebers (1837–1898) reported in his memoirs, published in 1893, about boy pranks with the light scissors:
- Cleaning the wick with the light scissors took a lot of time and gave us boys the opportunity to do a lot of practical jokes. Thus, for example, a sudden darkening of the room was deliberately caused by apparent clumsiness. One of the most delicious scenes from the marriage drama of Firmian and Lenette in Jean Paul's Siebenkäs can only be understood by those who still used the tallow candle and cleaning scissors themselves.
Still Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848-1931) remembers the light cleaning stay, which is a relic of days for him. In his autobiography from 1928 he remembers his childhood in East Prussia around 1860 and shows that the successors of the tallow lamps could not do without care:
- Even the soap was cooked in the house, I cannot say whether the tallow candles were drawn too. They were burning in the basement, so I saw the light-cleaning scissors still in use. Oil lamps soon came there when the new "moderator's lamp" stood on our family table, the daily cleaning of which was a long, difficult job and could not be entrusted to the servants.
In 1876 Louise Otto-Peters also describes the usual accessories for the wick shears:
- Usually, however, a whole family would sit together by one tallow candle, or in the rare case two of them. They couldn't be compared with the present ones, they were much better, but they had to be cleaned once in a while, otherwise they were dull and dark. The “light plastering” has already been written in the book of fables, along with all the “light plastering boats” that otherwise belonged to a pair of candlesticks and which one liked to add dainty embroidery and paintings under glass or to embroider with pearls and then turn around.
Collections
The Lichtermuseum Wettersdorf in Walldürn shows, among other things, various wick scissors in its permanent exhibition on the cultural history of candle lighting.
See also
Web links
- Article Lichtschere in Krünitz ' Oeconomischer Encyclopädie
swell
- ↑ light plasters. That is mar a frumme light cleaning (prayer sister). - idiot. Austr., In: Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander : Deutsches Sprich emphasis -Lexikon, Vol. 3, p. 127, quoted from: Digitale Bibliothek Vol. 72, ISBN 3-89853-462-6 , p. 28543.
- ↑ Jean Paul: Siebenkäs, Chapter 5, see E-Text at Project Gutenberg-DE.
- ↑ Complete poem with source information on Wikisource .
- ^ Eduard Hanslick: From my life, Berlin 1894, pp. 355ff., Quoted from: Deutsche Autobiographien, Digitale Bibliothek Vol. 102, ISBN 3-89853-502-9 , pp. 31664f. (online: zeno.org ). The short poem quoted was published with others by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe under the heading “Proverbs”.
- ↑ Georg Ebers: The story of my life. Vom Kind bis zum Manne, p. 43, quoted from: Deutsche Autobiographien, Digitale Bibliothek Vol. 102, ISBN 3-89853-502-9 , p. 19804. (Online: zeno.org )
- ↑ Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff: Recollections 1848–1914, Leipzig 1928, p. 46ff., Quoted from: Deutsche Autobiographien, Digitale Bibliothek Vol. 102, ISBN 3-89853-502-9 , p. 73299f. (Online: zeno.org )
- ^ Louise Otto: Women's life in the German Empire. Memories from the past. Leipzig 1876, p. 27. Quoted from: Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, Digitale Bibliothek Bd. 45, ISBN 3-89853-445-6 , p. 58310.