A young knife and scissor grinder from Naples stands full-length before a plain studio backdrop, bearing the full weight of his portable grinding wheel strapped across his shoulders. The CDV is an albumen print produced by Sommer & Behles, the celebrated partnership of Giorgio Sommer and Edmondo Behles operating from their Naples studio at Monte di Dio No. 4, dating to February 1868 as inscribed on the reverse. The Sommer & Behles partnership began in 1867 and was dissolved in 1874, placing this card squarely within its earliest period, and Sommer worked in all the popular formats of his day, including the carte de visite. Sommer's catalog notably included over one hundred images of everyday scenes in Naples, and this occupational type study is a characteristic example of that documentary tradition.

The subject wears a wide-brimmed felt hat pushed back on his head, a dark jacket over a collared shirt with a bow tie, and a long work apron over trousers. A leather strap secures the wooden-framed grinding wheel across his upper body, with a bobbin visible at the wheel's crown and rags or waste cloth hanging from the frame at his shoulder. His gaze is cast slightly downward, his right hand resting at his hip, conveying the practical bearing of a working tradesman posed naturally rather than formally.

The knife grinder, or arrotino, was among the most recognizable itinerant tradesmen of nineteenth-century Naples, traveling the city's streets with a portable wheel carried on the back, sharpening blades for households and vendors. Sommer and Behles became one of the largest and most prolific photography concerns in Italy, and their occupational street-type CDVs were widely sold to tourists and collectors across Europe as authentic documents of Neapolitan working life.

Inscribed in ink on the reverse: "Knife & Scissor Grinder of Naples." Printed studio imprint for Sommer & Behles, Photographes, Naples, Monte di Dio No. 4, and Rome, Mario di Fiore No. 28. Further inscribed in ink: "C.R. / Feb. 1868." Number "33" penciled at upper left of reverse; catalog number "2780" printed at lower left of recto.