“Polda and Pauline, the young seamstresses, were setting themselves up with the props of their trade. They, spindle-shaped and slender, like the wooden spools from which the threads were unwound, and just as restless, manipulated the pile of silk and cloth with deft movements, cut into its colorful mass with clanking shears, made their machine whir, pressing its pedal with a cheap little patent leather foot, while around them rose a pile of scraps, varicolored strips and rags like spat-out shells and husks around two fastidious, wasteful parrots…”

Bruno Schulz, Treatise on Tailors’ Dummies