Tweezers

Tweezers are a cosmetics tool commonly used for removing and trimming eyebrows or facial hairs. Throughout history, women in Korea have applied powder on their face and drew their eyebrows with ink. Since white face powder was not very adhesive and did not spread evenly, women generally removed facial hairs using tweezers or shaving threads before powdering their face. They also needed to trim their eyebrows to draw them into fashionable shapes, and thus used tweezers to pull out or trim their eyebrows and fine hairs on the forehead, before drawing their eyebrows. The brass tweezers shown here were decorated with the line-engraved inscription of "壽福多男子," which means longevity, fortune, and having many sons. An earpick and an awl were attached inside the large tweezers, which were fastened with a loop at the middle of the tweezers’ body to keep them closed.