Form or function?

Everybody likes a beautiful tool.
The question is: what is beauty - especially in conjunction with tool?

The very nice wooden sleying hook below is my first. The traditional Swedish sley hook has this form, is slightly thicker and made of white plastic. I don't know what the "original" sley hook looked like, nor what it was made of, but when I begun weaving all hooks had this form. (And most heddles were made of string, too - the new-fangled texsolv did exist, but were, well, "new-fangled" and not very popular.)

I did like everyone else - threaded heddles with my fingers, sleyed reeds with the thickish white plastic hook.
Then I bought the very nice and thin wooden sleying hook. This hook, exactly like the plastic ones, tended to fall to the floor when I lost the grip. I knew someone who had a silver hook (same model) on a chain round her neck, but the chain was not
long enough to let her keep it around the neck while sleying.

Then I met the red plastic hook (I think my first one was green). It had a hole in one end - with a piece of string the problem of the fallen hook was eliminated. But... it was not half as attractive as the nice wooden one.
After having used it for about 15 minutes I was sold... it may not be "beautiful", but it is everything else:
fits though "open eye" texsolv heddles (and thus increased my threading speed by, well, lots), fits all reeds down to 9 dents per cm (for the 11 dpcm I use the nice-looking wooden one), and hangs around my neck. Or on the loom, for that matter.

The long-necked metallic one - I don't remember how I came by that one. It is the only one that fits through the metallic heddles, but that doesn't make it any easier to use. The blade is so long that I can't use it while holding the handle...



So, for threading/sleying hooks I see the absolute beauty in red plastic!