David, you're correct in that strigils were usually used singly (or so it appears in the ancient pottery that shows athletes using them to scrape their skin).
But what if the nymph were a bath girl, as were common in the middle ages, who is holding a strigil set (they were often chained together), then it MIGHT be depicted as it is in the VMS. I still think the VMS image looks more like pincers or calipers (or pointy tongs), but I like to keep ideas on the table, so here's another strigil pair, combined with oil pot:
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But what if the nymph were a bath girl, as were common in the middle ages, who is holding a strigil set (they were often chained together), then it MIGHT be depicted as it is in the VMS. I still think the VMS image looks more like pincers or calipers (or pointy tongs), but I like to keep ideas on the table, so here's another strigil pair, combined with oil pot:
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