SAFETY PINS

Take a good, close look at a safety pin and appreciate its beauty.  It has a pleasantly rounded, elongated shape, enclosed, continuous in line. Most familiar are the shiny ones, either silver or brass in color. They come in different sizes and different weights.  Cheap ones will bend if given anything at all dense to pierce but a good quality safety pin will nonchalantly do its job in and out of anything from muslin to canvas and keep its grip.  They are undervalued and have an undeserved, negative reputation. People try to hide them when worn.  Walter Hunt, a New York Quaker, invented them in 1849 in three hours and received $400 for the patent, “not a penny more” (Googled). He was, apparently, trying to come up with a way to attach papers together without pricking the fingers as one might do with straight pins.  Or perhaps that is the story his wife told the world because it was more seemly than confessing to a broken bra strap and not wanting to always take time to stitch it.  Thank you, Walter Hunt, whatever the reason for your marvelous invention.  I love safety pins.  I wear them openly as fasteners and decorative elements on my clothing designs. I wonder how many safety pins it would take to circle the world in an attempt to raise their image. I wonder if I could interest people in pinning pins together to do just that. I wonder if Japanese safety pins differ from Finnish safety pins from Peruvian safety pins. I wonder if that number of safety pins exists.