The knife is, perhaps, the oldest of man's tools and certainly one the most inherently fascinating. For centuries, of course, all knives were handmade. But the industrial revolution changed
that. By the mid-20th century, the handmade knife had disappeared from America, where it had once been an indispensable part of the culture. The knife that Jim Bowie famously used to kill a
man on a Mississippi River sandbar was replicated thousands and thousands of times on anvils across the country by individual makers. But that art had been almost entirely lost by the time of
the Great Depression.
By WWII, only a few stubborn individualists continued making knives one at a time, the old way, and selling them to people who appreciated the craft. And one of those makers had the marketing
skills to spread the news-A. G. "Andy" Russell, whose business was hard Arkansas sharpening stones and whose passion was everything about handmade knives.
Russell tirelessly promoted knives and knifemakers and was the catalyst for an explosion of interest in handmade knives. Now knife shows draw hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts. The work of
makers like Bob Loveless, Steve Johnson, Bob Dozier, Jess Horn, and others brings prices in the tens of thousands of dollars. They work in steels that are both state of the industrial art and
old as swordplay. They have reinterpreted the Bowie and other classics knife again and again, with handles in everything from ivory to ironwood.
In this lavishly illustrated book, A. G. Russell details the history of the handmade knife and tells the stories of the craftsmen responsible for its renaissance.
