| Swords, blades and cutlery |
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The cutlery making tradition in Scarperia is at least five centuries old, and in the beginning these craftsmen were actually armourers of a very vast region. In 1538 the “Statute of cutlery makers” was written up and the artisans became part of a cutler’s union. Up until the 18 th century, numerous cutlers’ shops existed in the hamlet of Scarperia. There was a vast production of numerous types of blades: for war purposes (daggers, swords and spears); and for work in the home and the fields (forks and punches, pruning knives, shears and pocket-knives). In 1906 there were still 46 “knife and scissor” shops with about 300 craftsmen. Today in Scarperia there are only four cutlers’ shops that put out a great quantity of different types of knives: from hunting knives to butcher knives, from kitchen knives to complete sets of cutlery with horn handles, as well as a variety of scissors and pruning tools of all shapes and sizes. One antique shop on via Solferino, # 19, has recreated the atmosphere in which cutlers once worked, and in the Vicari Palace we can visit the Ferri Taglienti Museum
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