22 January 2010

Object #12 Bobby Pins


Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring...
-Henri Frederic Amiel







Invented on August 6th 1882 by a shoemaker to hold string in his factory, it took his smart wife to recognize its real destiny. But not until the “bobbed” haircut became all the rage in the ‘20s did the “bobby” pin really take off.

I begged this away from a friend and dealer in Tokyo who had thought wrapped in a small box in a tansu in a dark corner of his shop was a sufficient hiding place. Thank you god of rust and Good-Things-In-Small-Packages, and of course Mrs. Robert Pinney.