These are the photos of the art knives from the knife show I recently attended in Toronto. The first four are from the South African maker. They were not on display at this show, but are taken from his advertising. Note the patterning in the Damascus steel of his blades, and in other photos.
This one from a lady maker from Wisconsin. It has no finger nick, but can be opened manually. If you don’t tell the nice policeman, it also has a hidden spring, and an adjustment stick which turns it into a switchblade. Don’t you feel safer that the Government has banned these things? Some of the makers put out notes about their knives’ content.
The next bunch are by a maker who produces fine knives, but also spends hours and hours scrimshawing beautiful pictures on the handles. Do you like the coming-and-going, wildcat pair, in color? He did the same type of thing a few years ago, in black and white – chalk on ebony, and carbon on ivory.
Hardly recognizable as a knife, this was the most artistic (?), and most expensive. Note the $14,500 price tag. 😯
Looking somewhat like an Eskimo ulu, this is actually modeled after a European knife/tool used to scrape the excess off the backs of hides for tanning. Aside from looking pretty, this one has a razor edge, and can be used to prepare food, or at the table to slice roasts, etc.
The son bought a $1200 Katana from the same guy who made the blade of the Katana that he won, three years ago. I’ll show pictures of them in a future post. In the meantime, the rest of these are gorgeous.
A razor sharp meteorite knife, cheap at $2300.
Vey impressive craftsmanship (and craftswomanship if that’s a word).
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Aside from the jewellery – the hundreds of hours of attention and labor explain the prices. 😯
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Impressive indeed. What’s the deal with what appears to be embedded golden ball bearings in the fourth knife down? Are they functional or just decorative? And how on earth were they placed that way?
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They are functional – and decorative. If you can get a close view of the knives in the last two photos, you’ll note small discs attached to the back of the blade spines, just ahead of the pivot. Place the tip of your thumb against them and push out, around, and up, and these babies open as smoothly and quickly as your lover’s eyes, then the blade locks in place.
Other makers bore through the blade, just below the spine, and put in studs, like nipple piercings, usually ambidextrous/double-ended, with a small jewel on the end, on each side.
In the fourth photo, there are actually two knives. In both cases the little gold ball-bearings serve as thumb-studs, just with several, for a more assured “grip.” The larger knife beneath the top one also has gold balls on the forward edge of the bolster the blade swings out from, for further, matching decoration – just because he can.
Small holes are drilled through the blade, and short lengths of hot gold wire are pushed through, and then carefully peened over. Some makers use jewelers’ files to form, but this gentleman has a cup-shaped punch(?)/tool he uses, after which he only has to final-polish.
If you look closely at his pivot nuts/caps, you’ll see that he applies them with a custom-made, five-pointed, fork-like tool. One of the caps resembles a Chrysler Pentastar.
Aside from their beauty, these are an engineer’s dream. 😆
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Very interesting. Agreed, this is a fine blend of engineering and jeweler-like art. I can see the fascination in collecting here.
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In looking more closely myself, at the knives in the last two shots, I see that they all have studs, rather than the discs, which I (mis)remembered from the show. 😦
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