Optio asked: “Question if I may please? Does anyone know when scissors (roughly as we know them today) came into common use as opposed to shears (like the springy ones we always see in junk shops), were they in common use in 14-15C?”

We do see scissors and shears used for different tasks in the 14th and 15th centuries, just as the two different items are still available today. So here are some examples of scissors:

• Scissors from the Serçe Limani shipwreck
• Scissors from Viking-age Sweden
• Scissors from Wüsten Schloß, Oschatz), c. 1000-1250
• St. Francis of Assisi, The Taymouth Hours (Yates Thompson 13, fol. 180v), 2nd quarter of the 14th century
• An arm from a pair of cast copper-alloy scissors, found on the Isle of Wight, c. 1350-1450; and another arm from a pair of cast copper-alloy scissors found in Cambridgeshire, c. 1350-1450
• Linen clothing (fol. 94v) and silk clothing (fol. 95) in the Tacuinum Sanitatis (BNF NAL 1673), c. 1390-1400
• A pair of scissors from medieval Sweden
• Scissors from 15th century London
• Drapers sell cloth, The Schachzabelbuch of Konrad von Ammenhausen (Stuttgart WLB cod. poet. 2, fol. 199v), 1467
• Paulina, De mulieribus claris (BNF Fr. 599, fol. 77v), 15th-16th century

• Detail from the portrait of Nicholas Kratzer by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1527
• Portrait of Georg Gisze by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1532

The tax-collectors by Marinus van Reymerswaele, c. 1549

• The Tailor in Das Ständebuch, 1568
• A pair of scissors from the nécessaire of Diane de France, c. 1570
• The Tailor by Giovanni Battista Moroni, 1570
• A Turkish illustration of a tailor, 1583
• The haircuts linkspage shows scissors used to cut hair – mostly from illustrations of Samson and Delilah – but the scissors seem to become more common in the 16th century (see examples from 1537, and c. 1615)
• Some of the craftsmen in the Landauer and Mendel housebooks show an interesting style of scissors with an open bottom on the finger-handle, rather than the enclosed loops we’re used to seeing on modern scissors: Lorentz Sneyder (c. 1425), Hainrich Gößwein (1489), Michel Barth (1590), Heinrich Ernst (1610), Wolf May (1611), Wolf Hirn (1612), Gerg Wisheckel (1613), Bartl Harder (1613), Hans Praun (1615). Note similarity to the scissors of this tailor in ÖNB 2801 fol. 31v, c. 1464; this fresco at St. Cyprian by Conrad Waider, c. 1492; and the wife of Philipp Gundelius, c. 1575-1585.
• Scissor-case with scissors, 17th century
• Needle case and scissors, c. 1660-1690

Several more examples can be found in Illustrated Catalogue of a Collection of Ancient Cutlery lent by M. Achille Jubinal to the South Kensington Museum, and a few more examples in Some bits from the history of scissors.

For more on the subject, see Medieval Finds from Excavations in London: Knives and Scabbards and “Shears and Scissors” in Findings: The Material Culture of Needlework and Sewing. (I think there’s also some in Material Culture in London in an Age of Transititon: Tudor and Stuart Period Finds c. 1450-c. 1700 from Excavations at Riverside Sites in Southwark.) There’s also “Scissors and Related Pivot-Controlled Cutting Instruments” in The Evolution of Surgical Instruments: An Illustrated History from Ancient Times to the Twentieth Century.