2017 marked the 50th-anniversary of Fiskars' iconic Orange-handled Scissors, designed by industrial designer Olof Bäckström. To commemorate 50 years of this design icon, Fiskars invited artists, designers, and creatives from across the globe to participate in the Our Scissors exhibition, displayed at Design Museum Helsinki from September 7th through October 29th, 2017.

We were honored to have been invited to create a series of paper artworks inspired by the unique orange scissors.

The first custom artwork has varying sizes of flora emanating from an open pair of scissors, all made with paper. The concept is to illustrate the creativity that can be unleashed when one has the right tool. All the flowers are in shades of orange to complement the plastic scissor handles, the first of its kind. (Before them, people used heavy and cumbersome scissors that were made entirely out of metal.) 

A neat bit of trivia - the color of Fiskars’ first plastic-handled scissors came about when leftover orange plastic from a juicer production line was accidentally used to make the first scissors samples. 

Pictured below from left to right:
My 20+ year old pair of Fiskars scissors that I've owned since architecture school;
Our shiny new personalized pair gifted by Fiskars;
The pair of paper scissors that are part of the FRESH CUT FLOWERS artwork.​​​

The second concept is to CUT. COPY. ROTATE. The scissors are multiplied to create abstract radial patterns, which almost resemble flowers. The three pieces are composed of 2-dimensional papercuts which are layered and stacked to create 3-dimensional objects.