SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to the Good Old Blades Podcast. I am your host, Aaron LeBeer, and join me as we talk to other knife makers and craftsmen about anything and everything knives. Billy Connolly famously said, never run with scissors or other pointy objects. It's apparent that Grace Horn never heeded Connolly's advice, because during her 30-year career she has been running with scissors to establish herself as a premier cutler in what is assuredly a vanishing art form, if not due in part to her effort. Grace is constantly cultivating ideas, curating works of art, and accumulating research that is reviving Sheffield's cutlery for the modern era. Her attention to detail and ability to work within artistic constraints allows her to visualize and execute ideas that have seldom, if ever, been thought of, let alone seen. I get the pleasure of spending time delving into the abyss of what drives passion, pragmatism, and an unending flow of ideas. In my interview with Grace, join me and get to see a side of her that's reminiscent of fireflies, often seen but rarely captured. Grace, it's a pleasure to have you on the Good Old Blades Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

It's lovely to be here. Thank you for asking me.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Yeah, thank you. Um I I don't really know where to start with you. Um I I'll I'll I'll first say that my impression of you um is one of a lot of admiration because you're academic and you're also artistic. And I think that the blend of of those two of those components or tenets in life really um intrigued me because you're able to explain the things that you experience through your craft and through your art and in a way that is so eloquent and um and insightful that um it it that it breeds inspiration. Um when you were going through the process of getting into knives, was it ever apparent that you would like actually end up in as like doing cutlery um and and getting into like shears and things like that? Or was it like a progression that took a long time to express itself?

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Cutlery, yes. I knew that quite early on. Academia, no, that was a slow burn. Um so I did my degree in craft design and technology 30 years ago, and I specialized in my final project, actually, was a set of three-folding knives uh with Damascus blades. Never made any knives before, never done any forging. The only reason why I kind of went into that was because I realized that jewellery was a little bit frivolous and a little bit small, and I really liked working on the lathe and the milling machine and down the engineering department. So, and I liked things that worked. So the this idea of having a mechanism that um that had its open and its shut form, I've realized that over the years that kind of dynamic is actually really important to me. So I I was never, I didn't start with fixed blade knives, that wasn't really something that interested me. Um, the idea that folding knives were almost pocket jewellery was quite fascinating to me, and that they have this um their own identity when they're shut and hang around in your pocket. And if they're uh even when I was designing back then, the idea that they needed to be as beautiful shut as they are open kind of was really strong. I ended up um learning to make Damascus steel just for that project. Again, it's uh in hindsight, my career route looks really logical and it's not, it's a series of serendipitous events, really, and being able to spot when an opportunity for growth is there that takes me onto the next stage. So when I moved up to Sheffield, this is kind of cutting a long story quite short, but I wanted to become a traditional life makers apprentice, didn't think there was anybody out there, heard on the radio that there was, moved up to Sheffield to become his apprentice, he said no, he was too old to take me on. Um, but I realised that Sheffield Hallam University was running a master's program, that they were that it was a two year master's programme within their metalwork and jewellery department. Um, and they were happy for me to do edge tools. So I was only ever interested in knives. Um and I managed to spin the app for four years because I realized that it was cheaper than setting up my own workshop, that I could, even though it was part-time, they'd never stopped me going in. So they yeah, I could carry on using their um facilities. They didn't have great facilities, but you know, what they had I had free access to, and that also meant that I could then go to other um allied trades in Sheffield, and there still are um, you know, a lot of small engineering companies and heat treaters and small metal um steel suppliers and that sort of thing, and have access to them because being a student is unthreatening. I can I can persuade them to do all sorts of radical and weird and wonderful projects. And then when I finished that, I had no idea where I was going to go and um ended up being persuaded to put in for a funding application to do a PhD. And again, um I managed to spread that out over five years and loved it. I know that I know that a lot of people find their PhDs very traumatic, particularly if you're in a creative field and you're doing this, it was a practice-based PhD, which meant that the work that I was doing relied on me looking at my own, you know, my own work was source material as well as research. And I know that a lot of people find that a challenge because you end up getting completely tied in knots that you know you end up not making anything because you know you're going to be looking at it later and you want it to be really good, and then you don't make anything, and then you don't document it because you know you're going to be analyzing it later, and you end up with a complete uh creative paralysis. Um, and in a way, the subject that I chose to study was less relevant um than the idea of documenting, of researching, utilizing um my research in a practical way that feeds back into my practice. That was the valuable bit, not actually the subject of my PhD at all. So, yes, always been a cutler, accidental academic.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Yeah, that's there's a lot to a lot of questions that uh I have as a result of that. I'll I'll make an observation first though. It it seems to me a pretty uh solid gig to be able to have something that you're studying and then have it funded by the university, right? So but while you are learning, you're able to um remove some of the financial burden of that education. Um and that to me would be exciting because it's not there there doesn't really exist a program like that um in the States as far as I'm aware, where you can you can remove the obstacle of of uh that financial investment in the education. Like for for me and for a lot of um knife makers specifically, it's all trial by fire and uh throwing away a lot of money. It's where that adage c comes in. Like if you want to make a million dollars in knives, start it start with two million. But like I could see um in the epicenter of English uh cuddlery and everything like that, that you you take this opportunity that really pays out dividends because you you have funding for an education and you can kind of study um what interests you inside the context of that.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Yeah, that I mean there are two things there though. Um one of which is I just came at the tail end of having my um degree funded. That that's now stopped. So and and I agree with you, I think that's really that's really sad. Um my MA was self-funded, my PhD was funded by a uh a separate arts council, so it wasn't funded within the university itself, it was funded by a separate arts council. The great thing about that was that I constructed my entire um PhD program myself, put it forward as a proposal that they then funded, which I think was amazing. Um yeah, I I have to I have to admit that there is I've been incredibly lucky to be um to have the resources to do what I do. And if I was one of the things that I did when I moved up to Sheffield from from London um all those years ago to become a knife maker's apprentice was to get I had a studio down in London for a couple of years when I uh after I'd got my degree, and I realized that that idea of using my creative practice to pay the bills wasn't sustainable for me, not at that time, and probably never. So I decided that what I was going to do was get a job um that I hated and well I didn't hate it, but I just accepted that it was a nine to five job that paid the bills, and I kept my studio work separate to that as much as I could because it's I think it's draining on a lot of people to we have this strange hierarchy of um when you have craft skills, you learn a skill, you get good at it, you have it as a hobby, and it gives you pleasure, and you get good at it, and people say you should earn money doing it, you could sell that, that's really good. So you start selling it, and then people go, Oh, you know, you could earn your money, you could, you could make a living doing that. And we have this idea that that that when you're a full-time maker and you're earning your living from your craft, that that somehow makes you a better craftsperson than that person who's doing it part-time on weekends. And that's not I don't think that's the case. That that that's a com you're you're comparing apples and oranges there. What you what you've got is somebody who's working full-time and earning their living from their craft, is a good craftsperson, but they're very often a pragmatic craftsperson and they're a good business person. Um, and there are a lot of incredibly good craftspeople who don't even attempt to earn a living from it. And I I really feel that we need to reclaim that back. You know, this idea of an enthusiastic amateur, those people are very often the people who have the opportunity, the time and the resources to do a lot more experimentation than those poor guys who are trying desperately to keep their head above water. Um and they need to work side by side, and the sort of things, things that we can do to support each other um is really important. So, you know, I think that those people who are doing it as a hobby have to stop undercutting those people who are doing it full-time. They need to value their um their craft and their hourly um rate in the same way that you would be able you would have to if you're doing it full-time. And those people who are doing it full-time need to also respect those people who are just doing it part-time and not, and you see already I'm saying they're just doing it part-time, as though somehow that is not equal. And the these these people who are doing it part-time can experiment and add things to the industry and play in a way that if you're trying to make your rent every month, it's really, really hard to do.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Yeah, well, and I I get that kind of uh that bias where I'm a part-time, I'm a part-timer, um, but I I would argue that it's it's just a another full-time job, right? If I think about the time that I spend um making knives and doing research and doing this podcast and then working full-time, like I'm really maintaining two full-time jobs, but I think more more to that point is I don't think I ever stop thinking about this industry that we're in and all of the um the the tangential lines of that too, right? Um, because in in a traditional sense, um, I I don't I don't talk um a lot about shears inside of my normal uh like I guess purview of of knives, right? However, in in the uh Sheffield um world, right, that entire um industry that grew out of that, uh cuttlery and everything was uh not not just a cutting implement, right? It was you know shears and all of these other things that craftsmen do. Like I I couldn't even begin to cover the entire list of things. Um I I think it's important to also make that um the distinction around um uh around what what is I guess what what is the end goal of a part-time versus full-time and and the largest thing I think uh in especially in the American market is that if you are not a full-time knife maker, you are not considered in it to win it, right? And because of that, you have far less div investment from the collector market because if you're here today, you're gone tomorrow. And if you are not full-time, then you're not invested in making that purchase more collectible or more valuable over time.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

I think that's true, but I think the hardest thing that any full-time maker, well, any maker, has to our biggest challenge is to prevent burnout. Um, and I think that carving out that space to play and recharge and rejuvenate your um your creativity that's really hard. But you're right, I mean that longevity is really important to the collectors.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Yeah, well, and and I I I totally agree because like from my my vantage point coming as uh from a part-time um I guess investment in in what I what I what I can do or allocate time-wise is not the full picture of how invested I am in the in the artistry and the and the craft, right? Um I found that there were times when my full-time job was occupying so much of my time that I couldn't make knives. And I'm like, I still want to be able to uh contribute, I still want to be able to learn, and I want to be able to do that in a meaningful, impactful way, and this podcast arises from that, right? Where um in order to facilitate the podcast, I'm in front of a computer, which I am all day long, and I'm really good at it, and so what I need to be able to do is reach out in the industry and say, hey, you know, I'm really interested in just talking to you and pulling that back into lessons learned for other makers and for collectors and everybody to be able to attach on to this thing that I'm trying to do and derive some value from it the same way as I do. Like so everybody listening is just a fly on the wall in my inner workings of like um trying to uh figure out knives in the knife industry and and how all of these things kind of tangentially pull together, right? And so that that is a part of my my investment beyond the actual making of a knife. Um, it goes beyond that. And I you know, it might one day uh turn out that this is actually more impactful to people than it is me grinding on a piece of metal and expressing myself. I I don't know where that's actually gonna end up, but I am willing to I'm willing to go down this path. And so far, so far I've been very intrigued in an odd way, um, at how receptive the industry is and how how uh communicative listeners are in that this thing that we get to create together as uh you know me and guest, right? Me and you, um is it just means something to them. Um, you know, I have some episodes where people reach out and they're like, Man, I've been thinking about this all wrong. And it it really ca it causes them to pause and say, hey, I can do something different. I can think myself out of this hole that I've dug. Um and that to me is great. But again, I'm only part-time. So like if that's the if that's the uh the bar uh or barrier of entry, is that you're full-time in order to be impactful, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Um yeah, I agree. I mean, my um these days, although I still teach at in the university, it's only ever very part-time. Um, so in a way, there would be no reason why I couldn't be full-time making scissors, churning out hundreds. But I've realized that I'm not A, I'm not a manufacturer. I'm not, that's just not my mindset. Um, but also in I am incredibly curious about a whole load of other things as well, and other crafts, and they all feed back in eventually to my major kind of uh creativity, which is now scissors and was previously folding pocket knives. But you know, um quite a lot of my time, for instance, is spent doing research and it still is because that fascinates me. And again, I want it for my own information. And in fact, what I've started doing is when I find um old catalogues, I've started scanning them and realizing that actually one of the things that I can do is to uh make them available for other people. So being able to put them up so that people can download them as PDFs and that sort of thing, you know, it's work that I would be doing anyway, because I think it's important for my practice. Um, and it's it's it is quite a lot more work, but it's only another step of work to make that available to other people to be able to access. And I think that's important. And in the same way that you wonder whether your podcast might be more important or more impactful than your actual pieces. It they can't function, one can't function without the other. You couldn't just do a podcast without being a knife maker. Well, you could do, but it wouldn't be the same, and it wouldn't have the same impact. And it's the same with me. You know, I there you could scan these documents, you could put them out there, but unless you have a discussion around them, why they're important, what the context is, why they are why they're valuable and what have you, I don't think that that that the two have to work side by side.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

I totally agree. Um, one thing uh uh uh uh uh backstory. I I had an anvil that I had bought um that I lucked into. It was a hay button anvil, and it was the 342 pounds. I just remember this because it was like a little baby to me, right? It was it in in American made raw iron anvils, hay button was you know tops, right? It's the Rolls-Royce of anvils, and I found one in this in this uh um quest for everybody to buy anvils and heat and beat steel with forged and fire and whatnot. I found this one for relatively inexpensively for the for the uh pri uh for the the the size. And I eventually got out of forging knives bec uh primarily because I hurt my shoulder pretty badly, and it took several years to rehab it. Um and I I when I sold it, I traded it for a knee mill, a Bridgeport knee mill, and some cash, and that was more valuable to me at the time. But I've always thought about that anvil, right? And it went to a good buddy, and I know it's safe and secure, and he loves it and everything, right? But it it's it was a prime example, like the the plus 250 pounds are actually fairly rare inside of the scope of what hay button produced because all of them were made to order at a certain size range. It's like 300 pounds plus was that that range. So you have like an artisan anvil, it was made for a purpose, it sat in a shop and it has its own soul, right? Well, funny enough, um, I'm looking at an another hay button right now, and I'm actually going up this weekend to buy it. But um, in preparation for that, I bought Richard Postman's uh Anvils in America, uh, which is an incredible Magnum opus uh that goes. Through all of the American anvils and and describes serial numbers and identification and weight ranges and how that fits into the contact uh context of adverts and the the journey of that company and who they sold to and who rebranded it and everything. It is he picts uh not only a very interesting avenue of um collecting and researching anvils, right? But then the cascade of uh finding other people who collected anvils and and marking off their their numbers and trying to understand like the context that they operated within. Um it is the largest ex uh example, the most thorough example of anvil research that probably exists in history, right? And it um and I think about that in the context of like your research, because uh there are things that he contextualized that to the average anvil user would have never been relevant. Yeah, right? You find so you find something on somebody's yard, you offer them a few dollars for it, um, you you take it back, you clean it up, and you start banging on it. And especially in the culture of anvils in in America, uh uh the anvil is a very utilitarian thing, and so it was actually very reasonably priced. Um, but it we've we see this like artificial inflation of the of the um of the anvil price because of the demand for you know artists and crafts and testing out this whole fortune fire concept and whatnot. And uh now it's become very relevant. Like people pick up anvils and they want to know the story behind it. They go to Postman's uh records and try to discern where their anvil came from, like what the context and what the historical value is of that thing. And nobody would have had the same level of appreciation, like in a broad sense, if uh if he didn't have that research and development um procured over a you know a lifetime of of being able to study that kind of one thing, but then allow it to cascade in this beautiful bouquet of information that nobody cared about except for him, except in the context now where it's valuable. It's kind of interesting to me.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Books are so important, um, and certainly from an academic point of view, the idea of being able to reference books and go back and have a look at them, you know, I think that these days we have I'm gonna sound old now, but the idea that stuff is on the internet and it exists is fine, but it's so ephemeral, you know, it it might not exist, it might change. Yeah, this yeah. Where having written words, having documentation um is somehow still appeals to me. And and on so not on all of my um scissors, but on my special projects, they go out into the world with their own book. And that's partly because um the way I see it, um my work is like an iceberg. The actual artifact itself, the the visual bit is the visible bit, but it's tiny in comparison to all the research that I've done behind it, the story behind it, why I chose what I did, my sketchbook work, the models, all the things that I've done behind that um is is massive. And actually, I'm increasingly finding that collectors and just other people are as interested in all the bit that comes, all the supporting bit that becomes um behind the actual artifact, and that by documenting it and presenting it in a way that people can then access, um, I think is really important. People are interested in the stories behind things, and it might be um I'm always amazed when I talk to the old Sheffield craftspeople, they're so dismissive of their craft because it's just what they've done, it's nothing special. Um, and I think it takes it actually takes somebody from outside to come in and go, No, it it's at it is valuable. Oh, and that tool that you're using that you don't think is anything other than a worn hammer, that's really unusual too. That's worth documenting. Um, you know, this this little device that this little jig that you've used for holding that is very specific to your craft, that's valuable. The fact that you don't think anything of it is only because you've been using it for the last 50 years and you just don't see it anymore. Um so you can it's from a also from a researcher's point of view, going back and looking at the things that would be overlooked um that the person at the time doesn't necessarily think is precious, but it's now in hindsight that we can look at it and we can see the larger picture and see what how it all fits together. Fascinating. Love it to bits. I recently I just had the most amazing, I've got to tell you this story because it was just wonderful. There was an auction in Sheffield a few weeks ago, and I've been there's somebody collecting scissors who's new to scissors, I'm pretty sure about it with a lot of money because I've been outbid on all the scissors that I've been after for the last six months, which is a travesty because I have been so spoiled by uh nobody wanting scissors for so long that it's quite a shock to me. And there was an auction down in London, a massive um auction of knives, um, and there were some pieces in there that I was wanting to bid on, including the most amazing sword scissors, um, which to my knowledge the only pair that has ever been made from 1850, 1851, it's the great exhibition, and they went but much well outside what I was prepared to bid, and that was quite a lot. So it's probably just as well I didn't get them in hindsight. Um and then a few weeks later, I was still reeling from the pain of having missed out on those. There was um just an ordinary Commonwealth Garden auction in Sheffield, and in it there was listed four books um um from a scissor maker, and that was kind of all they said. And I went, okay, I'm on to a winner here because on normally catalogues and that sort of thing, because I had assumed it was a catalogue or four catalogues, um, normally they contain knives, and then I'm bidding against people who want those catalogues for the knives. Only scissors. Okay, I'm definitely on to a winner. I went down, had a look at them, viewed it amongst all the old shoes and the other lots of random bits of china that were there, and it was two workshop ledgers, um, so accounts ledgers, and two workshop books. And the workshop books weren't catalogues, they were hand-drawn drawings from a from um a brothers that uh I can't remember the names, but they were Rag Brothers, R-A-D-G, and they made fine and fancy scissors in the well, the earliest um book was from 1837, and then there was um a middle section, and then there was some later ones which were dated 1860, and these were hand-drawn, so these were never published, these were their drawings, and on it they had their accounts as well. So it said how much these scissors cost, the steel cost, the forging cost, the filing, the hardening and tempering, the um polishing and burnishing. And these notes, they're the same notes that I have in my sketchbook. You know, it's just like a direct link from my sketchbook to theirs all these years later. Tragedy of it was I didn't get them. I was outbid on them, nearly cried, tracked them down and persuade they're they're actually down in London in the bizarre thing in the archive of modern conflict, which I have no idea why they bid for them, really don't know. But I went down and did some um work with them, scanned them, photographed them, so I have copies of all the pages. Um and in a way, I don't want the original documents, they would look after them better than I would. But the amazing amazing thing about it, because I love how this the serendipity comes around. A few years ago, I was given eight pages of a book, or eight they were loose pages, very tattered, very um kind of they're only half there, and they're obviously very stained. And it turns out that the drawing is the same and the handwriting is the same, and they are almost certainly from the same factory, and mine are dated 1857, and they're they they're not from the same book, so there must be another book in between that disintegrated, and I have some of the pages from the book in between, so I was able to pair it up. Isn't that great? And then to also to have to be handling something that Scissor Makers handled back in 187 uh 1837. It's amazing, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Uh well there's there's a few things I can pull from that. One is it's it's very interesting that uh in there there's a concept, right, that uh we there's no original thought, right? That you know you we're just like r lather, rinse, repeating, or coming to that same uh conclusion that other people have in the past, and it's interesting how uh similar in passion um your experiences to those who have come before you, right? And and that and that tie-in uh connects you to the past in such a profound way because it's a passion that you have, and obviously it was a passion that they did. Right. But but then yeah, like you probably are the definition of serendipity when it comes to um your your journey through um through what you're studying and what you're doing, because it seems like um you follow these breadcrumbs, and it's it's almost like you're experiencing a past life of yours and you're just re-remembering these things that you did in the past. You know, it's I mean if you kind of like follow this reincarnation path or whatever it is, you know.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

I would I I I would I would agree with that. I'd actually say that all those years that I spent making folding knives was training for me making scissors now. Um, yeah, I I scissors, I can feel that that's when I found scissors, I could feel that I'd come home. Um and it's not only there there's a whole load of links, and and one of the things is that I think that I'm a naturally lucky person. I think that there are some people who I see them, I see friends, and I just think I I just don't know how anybody can can gather so much bad luck that they seem to be constantly hit from all sides, and I just don't know what they do that's any different to me. But whatever it is, I've balanced I get all their good luck. If you I wouldn't take me to a casino, but if you if I go to a bus stop, then a bus will come, you know. That's the kind of level of luck that I have. But partly it's to do, I mean, these days it has a lot to do with building a community too. So I get a lot of contacts, and um, in in a field so small and poorly documented as scissor making, I rely quite heavily on the fact that people get to know who I am, and partly, partially it's me having been around for 30 years, and there's no rushing that. I don't think that you can replace the sheer amount of time you're talking about longevity before. So people know that I'm here, know that what I do, um, and you know, they will keep an eye out for me. So they'll say, you know, there's this piece I got contacted by this guy who bought a workshop. He's bought a workshop in um the part of France that um used to be Nujon, which used to be the centre of scissor making in France. And he he's just he a few years ago, he moved into the workshop and he he's just removed a panel of the wall and realized that there's a there was a drawer there and it's full of paperwork and some unfinished scissor blanks. Contacted me. Did I want them? Hell yes, I want them. My god, that's amazing. That's like that's yes, of course I do. So part of it is luck, part of it is building up a community of people who are um who know who you are, so they can, if they've got a little nugget, they're of no value to him. He might as well pass them on to somebody who he knows will appreciate them and value them. They don't have any inherent worth themselves. Um, but yeah, being able to, oh, I just I think it's wonderful. I still get so excited about it, and I think that's important to me as well. You know, if it I don't think I could do what I do unless it excited me, unless I thought, you know, that this is whatever I'm gonna be working on next. Then people ask me what my favourite project is, and it's always the next one. You know, that's that's definitely what drives me all the time. Every time I'm I've got more ideas than than I know what to do with. I I plan all my work two or three years in advance. Um, so you know, I know what I'm going to be doing for next year's blade show, I know what I'm going to be doing for the blade show after. Um projects just have to wait patiently until I get around to them. It's one of the reasons why I don't take commissions or orders because I've got so many ideas that I'm wanting to do that the idea of backtracking and remaking a project that I've already done, it just doesn't hold any interest or excitement to me. So sometimes I will do commissions. I've actually got a uh project that I'm doing at the moment, which is a kind of commission. Um, it's something that I had in mind to do, um, so it can jump the queue a little bit, and then yeah, so that occasionally I do, but it has to fit in with whatever plans I have in advance. I wouldn't ever take a commission for uh to replicate a project that I've already done.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's that's that's our art my first experience with you is that uh a while ago I actually reached out about making uh shears for hair. And you mentioned that it's not really your your uh trajectory, right? And that you didn't you know take a commission like that. And um I I think it's interesting because I mean I I wouldn't want to marginalize what it is that you're doing inside of your own uh your own world, right? It is uh unfortunate for somebody like me who wants to be able to provide um a set of shears to my wife who is a hairdresser in in a very um like that would mean something to her, and it would mean something for me to facilitate that for her. But in the grand scheme of things, I respect it so much that you said no, because it's not part of your path, right? And I I I think that uh lesson learned for a lot of um craftsmen who take commissions based on a finite resource, which is money and time, and try to make it work because whatever the motivation is. Like um, I I know that there's lots of people that make things because they have to pay bills, right? And I think that's probably one of the most unfortunate uh things in craft because uh think about all of the random Pablo Picasso uh paintings that are out there that he just painted because he had to do it, um, and then they resurface and you're like these are works of art, but we don't have a story around it. And if he was uh applauded and supported in his artistry, this um in in a context at which he could operate in his like you know uh MO and produce these things that were really just you know purely genuine to him, um and everybody could appreciate that at the time that he actually created that thing, it would have been a wonderful um support structure for artistry.

SPEAKER_00 39:11

I know, and I know it's frustrating to people who approach me and say that they'd like a pair of scissors, even if it's even if it's not hairdressing scissors, even if it's scissors that I actually make, and I have to say to them, I don't sell on the internet, you have to come to a show. And that's frustrating, but it's the only way I can ration, I don't make that many pieces, and it's the only way I can ration my pieces. Um yeah, it just I I know from from my point of view that there have been some artists that I've I've wanted pieces from, and uh yeah, I can sympathize.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

Yeah, but it's okay. I mean, um I think about it and the investment to get uh the investment to purchase your time, right, and your creativity, everything, would be very high for me um in in that sense. And um there's a portion of me that was kind of kind of relieved in some way, uh, because as I think about um the investment in my well in my money, uh it would be um probably more than I'd be comfortable with, just like dropping all of a sudden.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

Yeah, um but when I think about what I'd like to be remembered for in 20 years' time, what I'd really like to do in 20 years' time is to go to Blade Show in Atlanta and there'd be half a dozen scissor makers making scissors. That's what I want. I don't want to be remembered for necessarily for my for my objects. What I want to do is be remembered for facilitating other people to make scissors. Um so I could teach you to make scissors, you could make your own pair of scissors if you wanted to.

SPEAKER_01 40:55

You know, uh I would I would love that. I would love that. Uh let's keep that in mind in uh in the future because I think that that would that that would actually be okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna use a uh uh uh a story here. When I first uh first met my wife, um she was a hairdresser, she actually cut my hair, and I'm balding now, but I've been balding since I've been like 12 years old. So uh she would cut my hair and I knew her as completely platonic, but then when I was going through my divorce through my uh through my with my first wife, uh we became kind of endeared to each other because she was also going through a divorce. And um as we as we got to know more about each other uh beyond the friendship of like um you know her being my hairdresser and everything, um, I learned a lot about her um history with her grandparents and specifically uh her grand her maternal grandfather was in uh was in World War II and was a uh paratrooper in the uh European theater, all right. And he got injured, and while he was injured, he was taking um parachute cord and and unwinding it and turning it into this massive ball that he would just w wrap around itself, and and he got he brought it home with him, all right. It sat in storage in some way, shape, or form through all their moves and everything. And um, and she spent so much time with her grandfather and grandmother, and uh we went down to their family property and I found this little goat feeding trough thing, right? It had like wire that was bent, and it was all it was all made by him just randomly to feed a goat, right? And I got the idea that I would take that and use it as my canvas to make something for her for Christmas, and so I took little nails. Well, I'll back up. I took old uh letters that he would write to his wife in uh in World War II, and I took all of these examples of individual letters and tried to find what the commonality was with the signature, and then I traced um what he used to call her, which was Lil uh Little Bit, or Lil Darling, rather, little darling. I traced all those out into parchment, and then I put it on my canvas, and then I took nails and I outlined all that, and then I took I got this uh ball of uh of twine that he collected in World War II from her mother and wound each one of those uh around little darling, and then I gave it to her for Christmas one year, and I um I I I was very uh uh uh I had a lot of foresight in making it the gift. Um, I put a lot into it, and I have not been able to replicate that experience since in gifts, um, but it's Interesting to me, you know, because you I I I put a lot of energy into that creative process to make something that meant something to her. I carve I burnt her uh her grandparents' initials in there because um um he like that's what he would do. He would just like write their the uh him and his wife's initials in everything, carve them into trees, put them on the shop, whatever. And it was always these like artifacts, as we as you you say, of his life and his love for his wife, right? And she got to experience that. And so I thought, you know, as we're um as we're together and we're doing this thing, uh, I put their initials on one side and ours on another. And I did all this stuff to tie in, you know, me and her, but then her relationship with her grandparents and their love and whatnot. And to me, it was really um, it meant more to me to create it, and it meant more to her to accept it uh than it would have been if I just went ahead and bought something. And and that is an example, like since then, I don't know whether I've gotten more lazy or I just can't top that level of creativity. Um, but it would be really cool. Um, she doesn't listen to my show at all. Like uh, she her support is like you go and spend time talking to your friends and doing your thing, so it's real cool. I this this will probably exist until I get a class with you.

SPEAKER_00 45:15

So this is still a secret.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

Yeah, it'll be a secret for probably for forever, unless somebody just spoils it. Um, but uh it would be really cool to be able to have that vision and then to take a class with you and then model uh scissors that are for her. I have no idea I've tried to study um shears for hair, and I have absolutely no idea how they work. Um even I've taken hers apart, I've sharpened them. I always end up sharpening them and screwing them up, and then we have to buy other shears. So, you know, it's a work in progress. But it would be lovely to be able to create something that actually works, and that I could do the things that I thought you you know I would want you to do. And then um the derivative is that I can take a lesson from you and carry that on in my own way. I think that's fascinating, and I would absolutely love that. So sometime when you're around and we can make it work, then I will for sure do that.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

There you go. Well, actually, news flash, I'm uh my okay, so my teaching next year is going to be um after I'm doing two US teaching batches next year. None of them have gone live yet, so none of them have filled up. So the courses that I was doing this year filled up really, really fast. Um I I'm doing back-to-back uh teaching in um the New England School of Metalwork in October, and the first week filled out so fast that they asked me whether I could do a second week. Um, and that, yeah, so that's great. But next year I'm doing a three-day course in Portland, which is probably not that useful to you, um just after the so in July, just after the oh, I can't remember the name of it. There's an invitational up there in Portland in July. So I'm going up for that. Um and then I'm also doing a five-day scissor-making course at um Jason Knight's studio down in Tennessee.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

And that's in October. Um, so yeah, those are my two my two opportunities next year, but there will be more, and we can always do it over the internet. I mean, I do um I do some, I don't do online courses, that just doesn't work for me. But you know, certainly I do quite a lot of online mentoring and I do troubleshooting and you know, that sort of thing, of people who are wanting to make scissors and and find that they're they're ground to a halt or there's an issue or what have you, um, you know, it's I'm always there. And and I was just thinking about you and your pair of scissors and thinking that actually it'd probably be quicker for me to just make the bloody pair of scissors, but that isn't I'd rather teach you to make the pair of scissors because that means that then the information has got out there. Um, and even if you only make one pair of scissors, that's fine. The fact that the information is out there is the important thing as far as I'm concerned, and you will look at scissors in a completely different way by the time I've finished with you.

SPEAKER_01 48:30

Yeah, well, I mean, I I do have like it's it's odd as we talk through this, I think. Like, uh I don't I don't really know how scissors trumps my knife passion, but it actually does in a lot of ways because I I can't think of a time that I haven't had like a pocket knife or something that I've I've carried around, and I can't think of a time where I haven't wanted to have a really dependable she like pair of shears, right? And it's it's so utilitarian and ubiquitous to the uh to like life experience that you're like, man, uh having a good pair of scissors is just the way it is, right? And um I I'm interested, and I think that as part of my path, I I uh I joined the ABS this year as an apprentice, so that way I can go down the path of discovering the um the level of detail and specificity that they require as part of their learning method. Now, I went through the guild uh experience and I I got probationary and voting member status in the guild, and that was a that was a f a really important first step for me in a in quasi-accreditation because to have to have a an organization look at my work and inspect it and give me feedback and and help me through the journey of elevating my craft to um the level that they did is important, right? Um and there's a lot of there's a lot of um pomp and circumstance associated with the guild. Um the abs I want to focus on the specificity of fit and finish to their degree and to do that through forged work and to get back into the forged kind of mentality of things where I can do both and and switch up how I want to um make pieces in whatever medium actually fits, like integral bolstered knives. Um, impossible to do unless you're milling a bunch of material around and wasting it. Um, but I like I really, really love the look of them. So I want to go down this forge path, and so that's what I'm doing. I I want to be able to make my own Damascus and understand all the different ways I can do a mosaic. That's why I talked to uh Steve Schwarzer about uh doing that. So it I I think that the path that I go down is and and and and where you're at is going to tran uh uh is doing going to um uh transact in some way. And I I definitely would be interested in that. And so um the wheels turn a lot, uh, but we'll talk about that offline more.

SPEAKER_00 51:08

Um yeah, and I'm here for the long haul, so you know, yeah. There's no rush, there's no need to rush these things. Things happen in their own time, don't they? That you find, and this is one of the great things about knife making. I know we were talking about this before, but you know, that without if you go to um study in a field like medicine, there's a prescripted route that you get to become fully qualified and get all the skills that it's felt that you need to become a competent doctor. And it's quite rigid, it's one that's been kind of laid out over the over the years, and there really isn't that within knife making. There's a little bit more with some of the other studio crafts like ceramics and textiles, you know, there are more um established uh routes within academia for you to get there, um, and also kind of more courses, it's just more well laid out. But I think that the great thing about knife making is that not only, you know, you have people coming at it from forging, and obviously we have a lot of people coming at it from forging because of forged in fire, but then you have people coming at it from engineering, you have people coming at it from jewellery, and they all bring um their own set of skills with them. Um, you even have people coming through leather working and woodworking that then end up being knife makers almost by default. They want the tools, they know that they've got a certain number of skills and they end up making knives. Um and the the this community has such a diversity of skills. Um, and I think that um it's really important to then be able to go and and pick and mix, and this idea of continuing ongoing professional development is so labored within um other fields that it's just uh uh it's a sort of thing that makes your toes curl. But there's there's no doubt that there's room for that within knife making, you know, that idea of going out, learning more skills, and then bringing them back to your own practice and incorporating them, not necessarily in their entirety, but knowing which bits then enhance what you're wanting to do and your route forward, I think is really important.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Yeah, um, well, I can think of an example. Uh, you know, I I work in cybersecurity uh as my primary vocation, right? And um in a lot of in industry purposes, like you work for Amazon Web Services or things like that, you have to have so many uh certifications uh and it's a and it's a barrier of entry for you receiving raises, for you being able to uh interact with certain customers, you know. Um there there's an entire slew of of barriers that are put uh in place if you don't have certification, right? And you spend more time focusing on this concept of uh I need to remember this wrote information in order to check a box, and less time thinking about what does that information promote within my myself to allow me to be creative in a way that is impactful or that is uh you know meaningful in some way. Everything is as is associated with a widget, like whether it's your time and the money that you get out of it, or um the a requirement in order for you just to be able to maintain your job or whatever it is, and in so many different areas of the human condition, um education is thought of mostly as a way to get a stepping block up to another dollar amount, right? And um, I I I think that I do appreciate in some ways that we are so free inside of the the craft market because we we do get to experience taking the bull by the horns and doing what it is that we want to, but in in American culture especially, I think that we lose a lot of the the passion and that that in intrinsic desire to create by trying to uh add conformity to it. So people people want education, they want they want this avenue where you can say, Well, I've arrived. But I I I've had Steve Johnson, I've had Bruce Bump, I've had Steve Schwarzer, I've had a lot of uh what what we would consider legendary knife makers um on the podcast and talk to them, and all of them to your point about um the cutlers of old that kind of marginalized their experience, um, it's the same way with these makers. Like Steve Johnson, I think in some ways knows how great and impactful he has been to the market of knives, and that he carries that on even still with talking to new knife makers and sharing things and and what he knows about it, but he's very, very humble. Uh and and Bruce Bump in similarity is the same way, um, where he's like, you know, what is a cut and shoe? Like, I mean, there's books about that. I learned from somebody, you know, you you know, you add a barrel here, you do a little engraving there, whatever. And I'm like, you don't understand. Like it's a life, you're marginalizing like a lifetime of experience there. And okay, so I'm 36, and I think about the fact that, you know, when you were getting into knives in this journey, I was six years old, right? I mean, I I have no room to talk about what experience looks like, what life experience looks like, even though I like I'm one of those unlucky people in life. Like uh, you know, I've had a lot of unlucky uh events that have happened, and I've always I've always decided to make lemonade out of it. And I appreciate that because I I've you know for whatever the cosmos offer you, um it I've I've like it it just is happen so happens that I I get a lot of unfortunate events, but out of all that trauma and out of all that strife, I've been able to see that there's um there's a beauty in suffering, right? Um it's like the mighty mighty sequoias in California, the way that they their uh seeds crack open is through the heat of fire. And I've always thought that that was very um eloquent because I'm kind of that way. Like I hope that one day I grow up to be a mighty sequoia, but I've I'm going through the fire.

SPEAKER_00 57:54

Well, there's no doubt that there's no replacement for time, and there's no replacement for hard for kind of that hard one knowledge. Um and and yeah, there just isn't there isn't a shortcut to this. Um and it's a it's it's hard to know. It's hard it's a hard lesson to learn, really, that there there is no shortcuts.

SPEAKER_01 58:21

Um yeah, well, I mean, you you you've you've even done it um to a certain extent in this conversation, um, maybe not realizing it, but you like you talk about passion and everything and being able to do what you love and being lucky. I don't know if I would necessarily say that you're as lucky as you are uh discerning, you'll allowing your passion to run, but then also just you know ground pounding.

SPEAKER_00 58:49

Oh, ridiculously positive as well. I'm just everything as far as I'm concerned, if I can turn it into a positive, then it is a positive. Yeah, ridiculously optimistic.

SPEAKER_01 58:59

Um, but you've you've put in a lot of work, like a lifetime. Like I'm again 36. You put in my lifetime of work into this craft. If you don't receive something out of that, some momentum that you've created from this like lifetime of energy and positivity and research and suffering and everything like that, I'd say you're probably a little bit insane and probably should put be put in an asylum, right? Like if you do if you do all that and you get nothing in return, then I would say then you know maybe you've got to do it because you love it, don't you?

SPEAKER_00 59:32

There's no other excuse. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:34

Yeah. No, I I mean I agree with that. And I I think that you know, I I it's the same way with like I I write pretty well. I would say I don't write like the greatest, but to people who like look at my writing, um, they're like, wow, you're a really great writer. I'm like, nah, not so much. I marginalized myself too. My effort, how how much it took to get to where I was at. Um, I didn't have a really great education growing up, and so like any level of intelligence that I've had is like very hard-earned.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:03

I'm in so I'm in such awe of people who can write. Writing is uh I I find writing one of the hardest things to do. It's not a natural media for me at all, at all. Um, interestingly enough, I have well, I have two daughters, and um neither of them um I mean they they can both write, but it's not a natural thing. I I I find it yeah, I'm in awe of people who can write.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:34

Well, maybe it's because there's too much conformity. If you think about it, like when you when you're writing, there's rules, and there's like like rules that don't change just because you want to be creative, right? And so, like, I mean, yeah, there's creative writing, but it's a manipulation of the rules to be able to express yourself, but you're given some very, very rote parameters, and you have to be able to make the most out of that that that little bit of something that exists.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:02

You see, you're just putting yourself down again. You that you're understating your your skill at writing. Yeah. And it's it's easy to do if it's something that comes naturally to you, then I can see how that's easy to do. One of the most important lessons my father ever passed down to me was that you can do anything if you break it down to small enough jobs. So, I mean, he was an architect, he built his own house and that sort of thing. Um, and you know, something like that can look daunting on the surface. And I think that when we look at people like Steve Schwarzer and those people who are I was gonna say at the end of their career, but I don't mean that. I meant that they have years and years behind them. We look at that in in in their pieces that they're presenting now in their entirety and think that's mind-blowing, that's absolutely amazing. Um, and it's I I think it's worth bearing in mind that every amazing piece, every cut and shoot we see, every mind-blowing piece that we look at is built up on tiny bits, on tiny jobs. Okay, so you know, learning to make your own screws is just one job, and it might take you ages to learn, but you know, it it's just a process of breaking it down to small enough increments, and each tiny job isn't as daunting as the overall piece.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:42

Yeah, yeah, they say uh how how do you eat an elephant, right? It's like one bite at a time.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:47

Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:49

Yeah. Um, I'm interested, um, because in in all of my research on you, I've uh I um let me put it this way.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:00

That doesn't sound stalkerish at all.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:03

Well, I mean, uh I I operate a podcast that allows me to do some stalkerish type of things in order to learn things. So I mean, I'm it's actually funny. Um there uh in cybersecurity, um my specialty is is uh social engineering. Right? Um I learned very early on, it's probably like a uh the sins of the father type of thing, but my my dad was very good at manipulating people in a in a in a not good way. And I learned that I also have the same knack for manipulation. But I've decided that in this effort to not be like my my uh dad to use my powers for good. And so in in a weird way, I've turned this into uh that trauma into being able to help other people through social engineering and protect them against um, you know, not only uh personal relationships that uh you know, gaslighting and other manipulations are um uh prevalent, but also um in cybersecurity and whatnot, because it is a main factor that you just cannot account for. You can't add a filter on a firewall to uh to guard against social engineering, right? But in the same way, I've become very good at at researching things and understanding context and being able to find a path to get information uh from people that allows me at the very least to be a very uh powerful ally in in um telling people stories and things like that. So yeah, it it probably in one context, if I used it for bad, it would be stalking. In the context that I'm operating a podcast, it really is only for your benefit to be able to talk through things and and have other people listen, but I digress. Um the the point really kind of is is that um when I do research on on people, it is that is purely so that way I don't seem foolish and and take for granted this conversation in this moment. You're you're you're investing a lot of time with me, and I how ignorant and how uh I don't know, disrespectful would I be to that moment if I didn't try to come with at least some idea of what it is that we're trying to do and what am I what I'm trying to like build into the purpose of of this time, right? So kind of like in that, um I like all of these snapshots in time of these interviews that you've done talk a lot about what you're doing at this moment and and have little tendrils to what you've studied in the past, right? But I don't know that I've ever actually heard of like what your holistic journey was from you know the time that you were a child or your experiences with your parents or like where you're at locality wise, and how that kind of led to you getting to a a point in time where you decided on cutlery and And how that was impactful to you. And I um you could tell me no, obviously, if you don't want to share that, but I would love to be able to hear that kind of journey from you in your words. Um here if you're okay with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:13

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's I think it's probably um an interesting story, no less because it's relatively unusual for me as a female to be in knife making. So I think that there when I hear other people's stories about why they are in knife making, um, you know, there are there there are roots that that kind of often lead people into knife making. Um, and they can, you know, I think that the question often arises or can arise, you know, how did you get into this as a female? Um and I don't think my story is that different from anybody else's, really. So my father was an architect, um, and um he it gets really quite long, but I was actually born in Australia. My mother is German. Um, my father moved to Australia after he'd qualified. My mother moved out there after the war, so she was very Australian. And um they she was a she was she was creative as well, she was very interested in textiles, and um during the 1970s, there was a whole load of so I was born in 70, and there was a whole load of kind of shifting where there was felt like there was a breakdown in society happening in Australia. There were um there were quite a lot of strikes happening, and there was um we we had a very modern house in the centre of Sydney, um, and it was kind of a showcase house for for his practice, which was quite wonderful at the time, kind of irrelevant, apart from the fact that it made them realise how vulnerable they were to infrastructure around them. They bought a small plot of land just outside Sydney, but it was 100 acres, so it was very small for Australia, but too large for them to feel that they could handle it as just kind of like small city people. So they started thinking about whether they could move to Europe, and they were basically my mother was basically a hippie, um, my father was less invested in being a hippie, I suspect. Um, and we ended up uh spending a year in Germany, my mother didn't like it and ended up coming to the UK, um, just on the Welsh borders, and we bought a small plot of land, it was only 25 acres and became small holders. And the idea was to be completely self-sufficient, completely self-sufficient. We had no inside toilet, we had um a spring, we had electricity, but we didn't have a fridge or a freezer for a few years. Um and it really was that idea of becoming self-sufficient. Um, my mother grew vegetables, we kind of had sheep. Um and I was seven when we moved. It was traumatic for my older sister. I think she was she found it more traumatic than I was. She was nine, I think, when we moved. Um so I was uh brought up with that I that can-do attitude of two people who'd survived the war, um, albeit on different sides, and the various traumas that they had experienced. My mother had a my mother went through um a huge, she was left in Berlin um starving just after the war. And my mother, my grandmother, who was Polish, my my grandfather was German, my grandmother was Polish, she bundled her two small children in a pram and walked all the way from Berlin to Upper Silesia, where her family was from, only to get to my great-grandmother's farm in order to be rejected by her and told that she wasn't feeding her. So she had to turn around and walk all the way back up to Berlin with her two small children because my great-grandmother can remember starving in the First World War, and she didn't want to share her food with any bastard German children. So she sent her own child, her own daughter, back up to Berlin with her two children.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:42

So this idea of being self-sufficient and somehow managing on your own resources was really important to her. Forward to when I had grown up, I realized that I was a practical, I mean, I was I was always bright. I wanted to be an engineer, really, but then realized that was too dull. Um, so yeah, when I was studying and wanting to to do something, I knew I wanted to work with my hands. My father worked with wood quite a lot and obviously building materials. My mother was a textile artist, very into spinning, weaving, all that side of things. And I had this dilemma between whether I wanted to work in metal or in textiles, and I realized that it made more sense for me to have a professional metal career and keep textiles as a hobby than it would be to have a professional textile career and keep metal as a hobby. It seemed to be a more logical way of working. So I've always run the two uh creative fields side by side. Even now I spend nearly as much time, or I have in the past, this year it's been slightly different, but in the past I've always run my kind of textile practice alongside my metalworking practice. Um, and I don't see that they are two separate fields at all. They feed in so integrally to each other as far as even it even as far as kind of the boxes that I make and that sort of thing. The idea that my scissors are generally for textiles or for craft rather than haircutting is kind of part of it. It you know, I know what I'm doing, I know what I'm expecting from scissors that are will be cutting paper or textiles or you know what have you. I'm not a hairdresser, so I don't know what that end result is going to be like. I don't know what the demands are of that, and so that's partly to do with my own ignorance that means that I'm not I don't feel that I can go down the the route of hairdressing scissors. Making the folding knives was part of that, and you know, my parents both had a knife with them. My father okay, my father lost one of his folding knives, and it was only a basic Sheffield-made folding knife that he must have bought in in Sheffield in the farmer's co-op. Um, and no other knife then lived up to the to the myth of that knife, and it must have been in hindsight. I think that the blade was carbon, uh, carbon steel, not stainless, and then all the other um knives that the farmer's co-op stocked were stainless. Um and this was in the mid-80s, and there's no doubt about it that Sheffield um Sheffield knives were not of good uh necessarily of good quality around that period of time. They were definitely choosing stainless steel for blades that was easy for them to stamp and grind, and not with no thought to how they actually functioned later on. I'm not going to make any excuses for them. There was a definite there, I think it's changed. Well, it has changed. We have now have some really good folding knife makers in Sheffield who are definitely selecting their steel based on the end use and not on the their ease of manufacture. But at the time it they were poor. Um, and that really got me started when I was thinking about a project about what um yeah, what went into what made a good knife and what um what made a good steel, and that led me into Damascus, and I handmade Damascus steels has always been it still isn't of interest to me now. Um yeah, it's been ongoing fascination. When I look back, I can see that the various things that interested me back then. I've still got my sketchbooks from then, and the sort of things that interested me then are still interesting me now. I can see not all of them. Obviously, I've kind of I haven't had time to um to be involved in all of them, but I can see that there are ongoing themes that still interest me now. Um yeah, so it's this can do attitude and this idea of self-sufficiency that really spark this off. But moving to Sheffield was a fundamental um part of that, you know, that idea that I'm a continuation of um generations of other people and other women within knife making, within Sheffield, is fascinating to me. So um even within scissor making, there are records of female knife makers and female, you know, people find it extraordinary now, but it wouldn't have been extraordinary in the past. Part of it is documentation. You know, if I look at old census reports, you can see who was living in what house house. Um, and if you're looking at things like the um the ledgers of these larger companies, you can see that people were doing outwork, and you can see that, you know, maybe four times the amount. There might be a man listed on the um on the receipt, but he's taking home four times the amount of work that he could do on his own. And when you read the census report, you can see that it's him, his wife, his mother, and their uh three teenage daughters, and they're all doing outwork in a domestic setting. Um, we've got okay, so the lovely thing is in Sheffield, in some of the terraced houses, in the kitchens, you can still see holes in the floor where post anvils were put so that women could do small forging in their house whilst looking after the children as part of the domestic work. Isn't that amazing? So they would have been putting the little um files on manicure sets, they would have been stamping in the the grid of the file, and they'll have been doing other little things like that, and they'll have been doing them alongside their domestic chores. Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:53

Yeah, that's uh that's fascinating. Um it it changes the dynamic of how we think about uh knives that come out of Sheffield as well, because you know, as a as as an American knife maker, I've gone down this path of you know this the slip joint or spring spring knife mechanism. And one of the uh um books that are referenced is the um exhibition knives of of Sheffield, right? And these collections that have come out of um you know the 1800s to early turn of the century. And there are a few knife makers that uh rise to the challenge of trying to uh reproduce the knives that are part of that book because it's one of the only reference points we have. Like all those are like finite and they're personal collections and they're highly valuable. You never think to break them down and try to you know copy them directly, but uh those who have enough grit will look at it and try to piece those things together in a way that they can um you know produce them. Like uh Evan Nicolaitis is one of them uh specifically that has done that in a few examples with uh uh and showed them off in Blade Show, which I think is really fascinating. But like to think that you know, there's almost this mythic um proportion to the cuddler in uh Sheffield and that one person did it all, right? That's kind of the way we think about it in artists and craft uh now. But then to think about the bouquet of people that were involved in that, you know, not only the the cuddler and who's putting everything together, but all the individual workers, the grinders, the the wives and children at home that did individual tasks, and that that is part of the holistic output that we see. Um, I feel a little bit bad in some ways that I marginalize the the holistic effort of people to produce those things in seeing the final product 150 years later or whatever. Um, but the context that you give it makes it even more fascinating to me. Like that's that is really cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:04

Yeah, we we we've become a little bit obsessed with this idea of soul authorship these days. And I think that that is that has its place, but I think that we're gonna we'll look back at that in a hundred years' time and um within knife making and see it as um yeah as a a a point in time, a way of working that we had to develop because we no longer had the infrastructure around us to support it. That very few, very few, in fact, none of these knives would have been produced by one person, none of these scissors would have even been produced by one person. Um you know, when you have a community who special uh when you have a community and they're making things by hand, the only way you can make them cost efficiently is to specialise. Um and you wouldn't have had people who would have forged and ground at the same time. You just didn't. Um, and in fact, there's the the the history of Sheffield is that there's a huge amount of tension between those people who grind and those people who forge. And I find it fascinating that that's still the residual effect of that is still apparent now, you know, this idea of do you forge, do you stock remove? Well, anybody who's gone anywhere down the path of making knives realize that the delineation between the forger and and a and a stock removalist is so grey and so not worth fighting over that you could almost identify those um people as being baby beginners to the um to the community when you start hearing them fight over stock removal versus versus forging. Because you know, you only have to be in the uh industry for a while to realise that really it's so blurry and so grey that each have their role to play, and it's really irrelevant um when it comes to the actual knife that you make at the end. Um in in Sheffield, they would have to forge. I've got some blades that um that have been forged for going into slip joints that were never finished, so they're as forged. Um and they are so close to the final shape that they are absolutely extraordinary. The precision that they got just through forging is amazing, and that's only possible by the fact that they would have to produce hundreds of them a day, um, and the fact that the grinders would get very upset if they had the grinders had to grind away any more material than they absolutely needed to. Um, and it's partly because everybody was working on piecework, so if the grinders had to spend any more time on the pieces, they would get very upset. But also the cost of the materials, the grinding, um, the the um abrasives and that sort of thing, they just wouldn't want to take off any more material. So there was constant tension between the the forgers and the grinders to the point where um it got really bad, and the grinders went and burnt down the forgers workshop um because the tensions got so high. And in retaliation, the forgers got together and went to the grinders' shop and replaced some of their emery with gunpowder, and it caused a massive explosion, as you can imagine, when the grinders started work on it, because they weren't grinding with abrasive, they were grinding with gunpowder, gunpowder and sparks, and not a good mix. Um, and I think eight people were killed. It kind of quietened down a little bit off of that, but yeah, tensions were high. So when you go to when you go to any show and you hear people arguing uh grinding versus forging, you can reassure yourself that at least we haven't got to the stage where we're replacing Emery with gunpowder.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:02

Yeah, that that escalated quickly. Um, you know what's funny is that um uh in in getting into the knife makers guild, um, you know, that this all started in you know the early 70s, and a lot of a lot of artists and and people who you know the full-time knife making was not really much of a thing then. And uh, you know, sole authorship, all those things, right? There's a lot of and the people who were making their livings at knives were very protective of it, right? And uh in in a guild where you're like everybody kind of has the same status, you're a voting member, but in the community, a lot of people have different skin in the games. As a faction of people in the guild, um, there was a lot of uh differing opinions about what what should constitute a guild member, what should constitute what they're promoting inside of it, and you know, uh you have the ABS that branches off of this kind of like concept of like we're going to have a society around night making knives, but then there's the dissension within the within the ranks, and then somebody, um, you know, Bill Moran is like, no, uh authenticity is forging your blade, and you get more out of it and everything, and so ABS uh gets created and proliferated. But then I heard a lot about the guild uh having meetings that would go late into the night, and people would get so irate with over things that they were talking about that they would like get up on the tables and shout, and it would be shouting matches for hours upon hours, right? And even in all that, like a lot of people that they distance out themselves from it. Like um, there's a lot of uh phenomenal knife makers that did not want any part of that drama, and so they left and will not return. There's no way uh to get them back in, and there's a stigma with the guild to some extent in uh you know, colloquially within the market, uh, that it's you know it's just a bunch of you know old, it's an old boys' club with um a bunch of you know um drama that that people don't want to associate with. And I would say it's very much calmed down, but if I think about it in the context of uh putting gunpowder in in wheels and b people dying over it, we really have not gotten that far. A few shouts here and there is not that much.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:32

No, I'm glad we haven't got to that stage.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:35

Yeah, that is that is uh that is a little extreme. But you know, it's interesting too because um I I think about it in the context of coal mining, right? So there's a difference. Uh I grew up in in a very small area of Pennsylvania in the Appalachian Mountains, and um coal mining was more of a focus uh for people that I was around than steel that was closer to Pittsburgh area, um, you know, in the west of Pennsylvania. And so I remember coal crackers and the mining uh uh operations and the way that those towns looked, and new people whose parents uh were afflicted by black lung, right? And uh cutlers uh or the grinders or whatever, they're sitting there on these wheels, are basically breathing uh silica dust all the time. Their noses are right up into it, there's no PPE or anything. And I I would have to imagine that the more you grind, the more dangerous it becomes because you're grinding off a lot of material, and you only as a person working in the grinding rooms and everything, you only have so many years before you start developing sickness. And like, so the stakes are high. You're like, well, I mean, if the more I have to grind off, not only does it take more time, but it's more risky health-wise and everything, even if I maybe they weren't thinking about that on the on the forefront. But um, I I can only imagine also each one of them were timed or expected to have a certain output, and if you don't, then you don't make your cut for the day. Um, and and that has a a direct impact on whether you can feed your your family or pay your bills or things like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:21

I mean the Yeah, most of them actually weren't um at in the employment of anybody else, you would have rented you'd have been freelance, basically. So you'd have rented your trough and um you'd get paid per blade that you ground. So yeah. You'd have been pay I think that your your comment about the health benefits is true, but I think that they would have just equated that with money. They'd have got they got paid relatively well because they had a relatively short life. Um, so yeah, in order to make enough money that to keep Their family going, they would have had to have worked really fast. Interesting, as a side thing, the only people who I know who had a shorter life expectancy than knife grinders were scissors were needle grinders, and that's because needle grinders ground dry for a lot longer than knife makers did. Even when um knife making in Sheffield were grinding wet in order to keep the dust down, needle grinders down in Redditch were grinding dry, and they had an average life of I think 30 years, 28 or 30 years. That was that was it.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:36

Yeah, that's not a long time, even for that period of time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:39

No. And they apparently in in kind of reports of the time, they uh yeah, they got paid well um relative to um other people, but of course, you know, they then died quite um, they drank a lot of their wages away, apparently. Terrible, terrible.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:58

Yeah, well, um, I know um there's a knife maker out of uh Kansas City um named uh Alex Harrison. He uh operates Nightwatch knives, and he's talked about you a few times and that he you know he every time we go they we go to blade shows or whatever, he likes to try to talk to you and um pick your brain. But um the something that he talked about on his interview was uh mental health, right? And I know that we talk about that kind of now as like a buzzword, um, but the more I talk to other knife makers and see what like a healthy balance of life versus work versus creativity versus you know all all the things, it's that a a very healthy and and um positive expression or uh you know existence within knives is is the best for uh creativity. And I can only imagine back then uh when the context was purely around money and your life expectancy, and you get depressed and you drink your wages away, and the the economic status and and the and the um um the uh especially in in the culture of the UK and whatnot being a hierarchical of sorts, right? Um that the all of those things would be depressing. Like you are just really working uh to the bone for a a penance, right? And um and dying early, and that doesn't afford you a whole lot of living. You're just living to work and then die.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:34

Yeah, absolutely. And I was making a joke the other day because I was sewing and um I do some social sewing sometimes, and um somebody recognized me as being the scissor lady, and uh she was laughing because I don't have any of I wasn't using any of my own scissors. And I said, Don't be daft, I can't afford my own scissors. And I mean, I was joking, I don't actually have any of my scissors. As soon as they're finished, they get sold. But you know, in the past that would have been absolutely it. These guys were working on um on pieces, and you talk about the exhibition scissors, but even the the basic ones, unless unless they were working scissors, working knives, they the workers who were working on them wouldn't have been able to afford them. You know, that they were working on stuff that they had no that were nowhere near within their financial resources to buy.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:32

Um yeah, yeah, uh that's uh something that the the catchbit show is an interesting podcast. Um Mike Moran, Jason Ritchie, and Neil Ponchard, who uh has done a lot of writing for um Knife magazine, um they they have that podcast. And uh one of the things that they talk a lot about is like the historical side of of pocket knives. And um in a lot of these examples of catalogs where they uh where we we get to see the dollar figure for things, it's like you know, it's like a dollar twenty, right? Uh for uh you know, a two or three blade. And then if you want special covers on it or something, it's a few cents more. But when we think about the exchange rate of cents and dollars, a lot of these were things that would be you know a month wage for somebody else or like unimaginable for others. And the context by which we say, hey, we'd like to go back into that era and buy a bunch of these knives, uh, because they're tens of thousands of dollars sometimes now in pristine condition, um, then it was just like the barrier of entry was so high, and nobody nobody got to experience that unless they had money.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:45

Um, there's an another example that I was reading inside of that Anvils in America book um that Postman wrote is that uh there's um the the the price of of anvils and uh the price of anvils uh was a barrier of entry. Uh there's a lot of times where you have to have an inferior, like you have to settle with an inferior tool because the you know the prime examples of a hardened top and everything, they just weren't uh as much around, and you know you had to make the most out of it, right? And um even at those prices, uh people still willfully um paid for them. But like kind of more to that point is that um it was difficult in in the like at the turn of the century, you know, 1800s, um, late 1800s, that the the the mentality was that anything that was American made was inferior. And so the predominant anvil, if you wanted to have something that lasted, was a Peter Wright. Um and so it's interesting to me, kind of this concept too, because I believe that the mentality in the 1800s, especially when Sheffield had all these amazing uh knives, was they were feeding an American market that didn't trust their own uh you know their own product. And then as th and as these rifts start to happen inside of the you know in the United Kingdom and whatnot, that we snatch up those cutlers and have them work in factories here and teach the process and everything. And then you see in the late 1800s, this uh early 1900s, this this inflation of uh knife companies that are producing really good work. And so in the American market now, um that is a a place that we go back to to look at like prime examples of all of these like thousands of different patterns and configurations and reasonable prices and you know the the industrial revolution that occurs here is really in some ways um a reflection of the mentality around import goods, and then that not being available in the United Kingdom in the same way, and then them moving over here, teaching us that process, and then us having a a renaissance in in cutlery and everything that you know we're we're studying now today.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:13

Yeah, and I find that history fascinating, you know, tracking through and how I thought I I think it's interesting when uh um scissor making is one of the um listed heritage crafts in the UK, um, and it's on the red list, which means that it's endangered. Um, and that has to do with the precarious nature of the number of us who are making scissors, and the idea that you know it really wouldn't take much for that all that knowledge to be lost. Um, and part of it is to do with um kind of exporting skills and skilled people abroad, you know. If people move, then that's you know, that idea. And and do you see that when when you track through the history of knife making in America, it's I think it's it's often easier to uh be an outsider looking in than I almost can't see Sheffield now because I'm so deeply embedded in it. Whereas I can see and track the history of contemporary custom knife making within um America a little bit more clearly because I'm not so deeply embedded within it, but it feels like um, you know, we imported all these people over to America and they had all those skills at making, and then it got smaller and smaller and smaller, and we lost until it was just down to a thread of people. And then it it almost has to be, and and I'd be interested to know what the critical mass of last craftspeople there are before a renaissance can happen, because it feels like if there's still too many hanging around, it's not valued, and suddenly when there are only a few people and panic sets in, um then it's then they it can be valued in a way that means that time, money, um, cultural value is invested back in them to mean that it can be documented and we can have a resurgence of it. And I've seen, you know, I can see that within um the American knife making. I think it's happening within Sheffield knife making 15 year 10-15 years ago. It's you know, with the last people dying out, it feels like it's it might have reached that critical point. Um, and I'll I'm hoping that it's reached that point with scissor making as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:43

Yeah, everything is cyclical, no original thought, right? I mean, like uh I think that uh something that was uh very um poignant inside of the um I guess the the bubble popping in uh American cutlery and everything was uh World War II. It seemed like uh you know the the involvement of America in World War I was there, but it was nowhere near uh the level as World War II. And then um you um f in the early uh turn of the century, right, you have all of these uh companies that start up. Uh then somebody gets mad because they're not able to express themselves or have uh a position in a cutlery company, then they go and start another one, and then you have you know uh like family that are you know riffing or whatever, and then somebody creates another competing interest. Um these there there, I don't know of a word to really describe it, but there's an ebb and flow to like the creation and dissolution of cutlery companies in America uh for a while until you get to the point where um World War II happens, and then you have a consolidation because a lot of the workers were going to fight, a lot of them died in combat, um, and then you have mostly um like a reduction in force to the point where um you know only a few companies are producing um any type of cutlery in in a way that is being used for military purposes and is highly rationed because steel is not abundant, right? All like it's like the world's import-export trade stops, and only essential personnel and only essential uh crafts are being supported and they're being rationed. So then you have this drop-off, and then you have like um if you think about Bo Randall, you know, he's producing uh knives for war efforts. You think about um the stem of Bob Loveless uh being uh in in the military and and getting experience with kind of like uh quasi-theater knives and everything, and then and then producing um he actually competed with Bo Randall at Amber Crombie and Fitch for production knives. Um and then and then he stems off the 1970s uh uh knife makers guild and this artisanry kind of comes back um with with the other founders, and then you have uh a while where that's floated, and custom knife makers and like handmade knife makers uh doing it full time is is odd. And now you have like fortune fire that comes out and everything, and we see this uptick again because um because of popularity in the crafts and artisanry over the um uh the the bottleneck that was created because it was only important as a critical um as a as a critical component of supporting the war. I mean, how how much culture was lost from the late 1800s to um the early 1930s um because the economics weren't there to support uh the craft. Like I it's very hard to track too, because I I think that anybody that I've talked to from a historical perspective in America, um there are so many companies that rebranded themselves. So they were one company, then they were two companies, and then they changed their name three times and then they closed it, and then those rights and patterns were bought off by somebody else who had a better operation, and it's really hard to track um who owned what, when, where did patterns come from, and everything. And um, it's something that I've actually um been interested in. I I don't have the time for the project right now, but uh we've been talking uh about provenance, like patterns and patterns and concepts in knives have some provenance, but we don't really understand where they come from all the time. It takes a an exceptional amount of research to build those bridges in time on where things came from. In pocket knives, we have a provenance from the time of Tony Bowes forward because he took a lot of these old patterns that he was familiar with and had culture around and re-popularized them and also helped to use the uh case uh manufacturing um um um like the the power behind them to produce some of these patterns that then become like the the knives that we collect today, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:24

And I think it's interesting. I mean, it's it's although it's challenging, it's relatively in relatively easy to plot through changes of names and ownership. What it's even harder to do is plot through skills. So, you know, that these workers train these workers who then moved to this company. Um, you know, so that transference of skills is is even harder to track than than um than designs and names of companies. Just to go back to the kind of the cutoff point, ours was the first world war. What happened was that whole groups would sign up in the same regiments. So all the grinders from Western Home signed up in the same regiment and got decimated in France, you know. So we this was we suddenly ended up after the first first world war with with a lack of of skills because they just got killed and all killed en masse. So you know, that idea of of losing an entire generation of skilled workers, um, they weren't even they didn't even sign up in the in the company, they would sign up as grinders in the company and then get what, you know, that that's a huge loss to a field to to even think about. Yeah, it is what it is, but we work from there, don't we? We build up and uh it's like kind of um animals dying out or you know, mass extinctions, you know, what then comes up. Although we always say, and I think it's absolutely true that we're standing on the shoulders of giants, and what it I think it's imperative that we understand what's gone before, and even from my point of view, you know, thinking about the negative side of what's gone before as well. Um you know, as as far as the amount of ivory that was used and the um and also the the stripping of resources from around the world where when when we're ahead of an empire and we just stripped resources, um, you know, we we have to accept that that happened and move on from that in a in a different way now, based on on the kind of the context that we have available, and also the idea that it is a different world, and although nothing is new and everything is cyclical, and we kind of come back to the new uh to designs that happened years ago and that sort of thing, the fact that it's happening now means that it's different.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:15

Yeah, well, and um something that I hear as a uh uh a cadence by the old makers is that uh the skill set of the average person entering knives is so much higher than back in their day. It seemed like they were making more cruder knives and uh more simplistic concepts, and a few of those people took it to extremes and made you know art knives, you know, um examples of just the pinnacle of of knives and uh fit and finish and everything. But you know, you can like and I've seen it here, like you know, a a maker that spends three or four years uh just uh figuring out how to do the thing with the technology and whatnot that they have can make a knife that's far superior than somebody who is cracking at it for you know 15 or 20 years back in the day, uh, sometimes. And I I think that um I don't see that as much. And and the uh maybe it's the reason why is because I I always try to keep my ear to the uh to the railroad tie um when it comes to like you know emerging um makers and things, but uh there seems to be to uh to me a lot more marginal knife makers um out there experimenting with things, and then out of that a few knife makers excel. And and if you if you look at the people who excel as the um as the use case, then I I think that that's unfair to to evaluate that data. Um it's kind of like the for uh survival ship um dilemma, right? Or paradigm. Like there is a an exceptional amount of marginal to bad knife makers out there, and there are a few that decide that they're just going to take all of the skill sets that they can apply, this cross-discipline of understanding maybe that they are um a manufacturer in some way, or an engineer in some way, or a machinist in some way, or tool and diamaker, or they have some something that gets them technical, you know, down to the the finite and the granular, and they expound on that and then they become great. But a lot of these older knife makers are looking at that like that is the rule and not the exception, which is funny to me because that they in themselves were also the exception. There's a lot of, I'm sure there were a lot of knife makers at the time that tried to take their crack at it. And uh, we can kind of see that in World War II, there's an entire collector um um market for uh what they call theater knives or theater knives, right? And you know, um they're just people that were cracking on machinery on on ships and where they had it and made these knives to pass the time away in transit from place to place or whatever. And um they came home, some of them became knife makers, and a lot of them did not. And you have like this just this uh footprint or these artifacts of making sharp uh pointy things in the context of war, and it never turned out into anything. But I know a lot of uh uh knife makers, their experiences were like their grandparents or their parents had these knives, and that was something that was an experience point for them to then make knives themselves. Again, not the rule, but an exception to it.

unknown 1:48:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:42

I think the other thing that we need to bear in mind when we look at historical examples and kind of compare ourselves to them, is that the the everyday didn't survive. Or there are fewer examples of the everyday and the poor quality. Generally, it's only the the better quality, the the things that were treasured or were saved and special or were exhibition grade that kind of come forward now. So I think you're right, there were there there will always be a percentage of people who will want to push their craft just that little bit higher. It doesn't matter whether they were, you know, uh 500 years ago or now there, I think, but I do think that we've got people entering the field of knife making now have the supreme advantage of surprisingly low priced machinery. So, you know, you're saying about having to settle for low price priced anvils to start with. I mean, you can set up really quite an adequate workshop these days very affordably. I mean, it's amazing, really. Um, and also you have all that information. Information available to you in a way that just wasn't available, it wasn't um that people couldn't access, you know, unless you knew somebody to teach you a hundred years ago. It was really hard to get that information. Um, we can leapfrog a whole load of mistakes and experimentation um these days and kind of get information, albeit you have to have a certain amount of knowledge to know which knowledge is useful. That's an entirely different conversation, isn't it? Filtering out all the bad information that you can find. But I think that what that is doing, hopefully, is raising a generation of, I like to think, because I am a positive person, we've talked about this before. I like to think that we are producing a generation of people who don't take information at face value that I hope that we start producing people who are a little bit more critical about the information that they receive, that it's not just because it's written down doesn't mean it's kind of correct or correct for them even.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:05

I totally agree. Yeah, discernment as an as a critical component. Well, I and I think that that's something um with your research and people who think very um uh well I can't say logically, um, because there are some ways that you think very tangentially about things in order to get to a point. And I I'll kind of uh um I'll kind of expound on that. There's a type of knife that you've probably seen before is called the swordbreaker, right? And uh Steve Schwartz and I were talking um a while ago about that as a concept of you know, the reason why it exists or we have ex like pristine examples is because it was impractical to use and so it got stowed away somewhere, right? It it like um and in World War II, um I I talked about this just a little bit previous about this this survivorship bias, right? Where there were there were planes that were getting shot at, and uh and when they came back, they looked at where the bullet holes were and then they started plating those areas up, but then less of them started coming back. And so somebody had the bright idea to say, um, we probably should plate all the areas that don't have bullet holes in them, because where the bullet holes are, obviously they can survive, but the places where they're not shut up, those need to be plated because that's what's probably causing critical failure. And I when we're researching things, I I'm not interested, and it's it's the reason kind of why I talk to people like you and I try to pull from different areas of the knife making community is because I don't I don't just want to hear from people that are covered in magazine publications. I don't want to just talk about things that are covered in like, you know, these are the dates, these are the uh experiences that you had that fit inside of just a magazine article or a brief interview. I want to dig deeper into the obscure parts of history, the obscure parts of like what motivates people, because that to me is where it's more interesting, where we can we can kind of unravel that confirmation bias in the survivability paradigm and everything and talk more about like what it is that actually causes things. And I think that's really important in research. So yeah, maybe I'm a little bit stalker-ish in some ways, uh, but I I want to I want to kind of get sift through the stuff that you see on Facebook, and I want to get to the things that are actually uh the driving forces for ideas or creativity or something to happen. And then I want to be able to think about that critically, and then other people can too. I mean, you don't know what you're gonna pull from a conversation, um, even in the context of what we are talking about here. Like you've given me like nine million different ideas, and I have questions that like I you you personally probably couldn't take the time to answer them for me. So now I gotta spend another year doing podcasting stuff to try to answer these few questions that I like that you derive from me. So it's kind of all this butterfly of butterfly effect of um um you know research, passion, creativity, um, and so on and so forth. And that to me is uh that's what it gets me excited. I have kind of like a monotone voice. I don't really get like you can't tell that I'm super like excited, but internally I'm kind of like giggling inside because there's so much more that I can like discover and play with in my own mind and with my own time uh that uh stems from this. So, you know, it's it's I I think though that people from a research perspective need to be able to understand that what is on the surface, like what you can find easily, is the is obtainum, right? Uh for somebody like you who finds this, like this friend has this um like this drawer of things, and you get to look at them, or these slips of paper or volumes from stuff, those are things that they you have to be on the lookout for. In some ways, you might not even know what you have until there's some context that's built around it. But that quest to like dig in and to try to add context to things that seem um they seem unrelated at first, but if you spend enough time building these like you know, these connections between them, it really becomes quite fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:27

It really does. I think my I would when I went down to I did the Texas knife show um earlier on this year, um, for the first time, and it was it was interesting because I yeah, as I said, I haven't been down there before. And um as normal, you know, I'm the only scissor maker there. And um I'm very I'm very comfortable um at Bladeshow Atlanta because I've been going for so many years. I think it's the 18th or 19th year that I've been going. Um but you know, the new environment down in in Texas. So I decided that what I would do is I would ally myself with the slip joint makers and ask them to adopt me as an honorary member for the um so slip joint cartel took me under their wing um for the uh for the show. And I realized that even with my history of of working slip joints aside, I feel that they're that I have a lot in common with the traditional slip joint makers. And part of it is to do with the idea of of looking at historical patterns. And yeah, I I think that a lot of um modern knife makers, um there are a lot of people when they start out that they are they you can get quite obsessed with the idea that you need to design a knife that nobody else has designed before before you make it, and I think that this is a real stumbling point for a lot of people that they feel they need a unique design before they've even learned the basics about making a knife, and there is a huge amount of um information to be learned by these old patterns. I know that there's much more of a tradition of this uh in um in Japan and even in China where they where they they train their trades up through imitation, and I know that has a whole layer of uh difficulty that we're not going to go into here, but I think that because there are so many traditional patterns within slip joint making that aren't protected, that people don't get obsessed over in the same way that some of the um modern designs quite rightly do. Um and scissor making is like that. I think there's room for everybody. So if anybody is interested in making scissors, I would thoroughly encourage people to look at the patterns that are around them that unless they are new dressmaking scissors, um, haircutting scissors, some of those are copyrighted, but uh, you know, we've got such a vast information, vast kind of like collection of scissors that can just be copied and you can learn an awful lot. You know, before there's a whole different category of doing something entirely new. Um don't be put off by doing either making knives or making learning to make scissors because you haven't got an original idea and you don't feel that you can add anything, because you can, and that will come later, and developing your own um style and your own language and your own um kind of distinctive style comes in time. I don't think you can rush it.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:47

I I agree. Um it's yeah, I think that it's interesting, even like you think about the slip joint cartel in Texas and everything. Uh there's there's even within that group, I mean, because they're all really great uh slip joint makers, that there are a few that really amp up their own artistry in the context of slip joints, um, and really perfect it. And and two, I see in that group, uh, so you know you obviously Bill Rupel uh is uh an amazing uh knife maker and and took his um style of of slip joint making to a very high degree. Uh I I I we can argue uh pretty well that Tony Bose and Bill Rupel are like the they're they they're the people to shoot for um if you're if you're looking at a craft style, right? In inside of the slip joint cartel, and I won't try to marginalize any of the other people, but Tyler Turner um has a very unique um sense and sensibility about how he thinks of creating things. And I think that whatever he touches kind of turns to gold. Um he just you know he's he's an agriculture boy, you know, he's from um I think he I think he's in uh Missouri, if I remember correctly, but he he's a farm boy, like he that's what they do full time, and he has a machine shop and he repairs old machines and then he makes these works of art. He touches art knives, he touches slip joints, he does all that. Real real interesting cat. And Tim Robertson has gone the machining route of making um knives and thinks about everything in terms of fit and finish and like the upper echelon of just fine, right? It has to operate correctly, but it also has to have an aesthetic representation and a historical representation and has to fit um all of these like high that's a high degree of precision. Um and he uses tooling, like he's he's uh um almost single-handedly brought back the pantograph um uh for knife makers to use as a tool. Um, you know, he's proliferated that. And you you think this group of people that you know they make pocket knives, sure, but um inside of that, they've also gotten really good at making a pocket knife and also really good at expressing themselves through that medium. And that's no different uh than you. You know, your early examples of a of a slip joint for uh you know, for your dissertation or whatever, is probably not the pinnacle of your expertise. You know, you look at everything that you've done since, and you have crafted that into a niche that um, yeah, arguably there's lots of other uh people that have made scissors in the past, but you've turned it into something that is very uniquely you. And when I think about when I think about people inside of um industry holistically, I look at you and what you're doing, and I could pull that as an example for like if if I want to, if I want to like tell my daughters about something that I think that they want to focus on, you know, this is a really great example of somebody who just uh they did their thing, they didn't like they they like I I can't even encapsulate what your journey has been, but I can say look at look at uh Grace Horn, like look at what she's doing, and if you have any questions about um whether it can be done, first of all, but but what kind of path you can take in this like creative um practical type of modality uh to success, you're it. You're a role model for for people holistically, but you're also somebody that I would point to for my own children to be able to kind of like crack open that nut because I I have a bias. Like I tell my children, like don't act up and you know, I'm I'm preparing them for like a a uh societal integration. I can't really do both, where I'm also preparing them to not be jerks uh towards everybody else, but then also say, you know, in spite of all that, I want you to be a free spirit and discover and use your life energy for whatever it is that you think that you bring to this world. And so that's why I use role models um where I say, you know, you look at these people. And and that's I think that's really cool. I think it's uh you being able to talk on this podcast at this time is an ex is a case in point for others to be able to use that for their their own journeys, and um it's it is an incredible pleasure to be able to like spend time with you and talk through that.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:31

Well, thank you for that. I don't really feel like an inspiration for anybody. I'm just so busy doing my own thing, really. I think that I think that's fundamentally it. I'm I'm just so yeah, so involved in doing my own thing. But uh I do I do love the idea of other people carrying on, you know, and I feel like uh inspiration isn't the word that I would use, but I I'd like to be that catalyst that means that other people are um then go away and either feel enthused to do stuff differently or do more or try stuff or just be yeah, I just want people to be enthusiastic about what they do.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:20

Yeah, um my my last question uh kind of and we talked a little bit a bit about this before uh the podcast started, but um you know, like I I know that it it might seem like normal or um expected that I'm like, oh I have daughters and you're an inspiration and everything like that. And and people would look at you as a as a female inside of the uh a male-dominated society and everything and think, well, that let's just focus on that. Um do you do you find really that um there's there's any barrier of entry because you're um you know a female working inside of this this craft? Because I I've done a you know a fair amount of stalking on articles um uh for you. I'm just gonna say stalking from now on. Um it seems to me at least that there are a lot of females that have worked in industry and we just like it's novel right now that um we have a lot of a lot of men working in things and not so many females. Like, do you ever find that to be an issue or that you get marginalized because you're a female and not because of like all these amazing things that you do uh as a result?

SPEAKER_00 2:05:31

No, no, I don't. Um, and there are a couple of reasons for that. I am confident in the fact that and that the material that I produce and the objects that I produce are fascinating enough in their own right that people aren't just coming to me and asking me because I'm a woman, that actually even if that might be the first reason, the first thing, I I am arrogant enough to and confident in just how fascinating the scissors are, that I believe that I that that that then becomes um the bit that engages them. Um actually being a woman within knife making within uh the chef uh Sheffield environment has always worked in my favour. Um it's because they haven't ever considered me um competition. Certainly amongst the old boys, I know that there were um other people who had approached them and wanting to get information out of them who had been turned away because they they didn't like the idea of training up somebody who would then be competition and they had assumed that as a woman I wouldn't be. Um they were right. There's no way that any of the people who I obtained any skills from have been in any way um competition to me. It partly due to age, you know, they've been at retirement age and I haven't. Um and also, you know, we're in very different fields. So the gender thing worked in my favour then. The funniest thing was that I was uh when I came to Sheffield to become a knife maker's apprentice all those years ago, and Stan said he was too old to take on an apprentice and sent me away with a whole load of bits and told me to figure it out myself because it wasn't that hard. Um we stayed in contact over the years, and one of the reasons that I learned much later that he didn't want to take me on as an apprentice was because he was working in an old workshop and there was no toilet. And the toilet was downstairs, so they had a pea bucket in the corner of the workshop, and these were two old men with small bladders, old men bladders, and they thought it was too mortifying to have a woman in the workshop when there was a pea bucket in the corner. And I only learnt that much, much later. So that was the only time I think that gender hasn't worked in my favor. The rest of the time it's really not an issue, and I would encourage oh gosh, it really isn't. So anybody these days who's starting knife making relying entirely on their brute strength is doing it wrong and it's not sustainable. Um your body, you know, use tools, use tooling, um, think about ways that you can work around not necessarily having the physical strength that other people, particularly men, might have, because your body will thank you in 20 years' time. If or if if you have poor, if you're if you're only relying on the brute strength that God gave you, then you're going to you're gonna wear your body out really quickly.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:59

Yeah, my bad back um could have heard that about 20 years ago, and I would have been a lot better off. So I guess it's a little bit this is your mother talking, yeah. Right. Well, um I really appreciate you. I think that you spent a lot of time uh talking to me and everything, and I'm sure it's uh about dinner time there, and you need to get back to you're gonna have a lot of editing to do, Miss, aren't you? I don't think so. No, I leave it all in. I mean, I uh the the thing is like if people have pot like particular potty mouths or things like that, then I might have to like edit a little bit because I would like the j younger audience to be able to um um experience it without having uh too many.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:40

Now I think we've managed to get through this without swearing at all, haven't we?

SPEAKER_01 2:09:43

Yeah, well, I mean you did say bastard a while ago, but it was in the context of an ill illegitimate child and part of your history. So I think that that's okay. Thank you. Yeah, so I usually tick it off. If we're like if we're under a certain number, it's the same way with like what you what gets you an R rating in in Hollywood, uh you have to do certain things, and so I kind of like I kind of tailor it to that. If it's a little bit too egregious, then uh you know, maybe I maybe I do a little bit of cleanup, but otherwise, and sometimes it's hard because there's this no ability in uh when you have a really good sentence or a really good idea to just cut out the thing that makes it that, and it might be a bad word. It just it's it's a yeah, it's an exclamation point to an idea that sometimes is just poignant. So, you know, use correctly, you know, vulgarity can actually be a mechanism for it.

SPEAKER_00 2:10:31

So then I'm talking about number two embusted files. That would have got through okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:35

Yeah, probably, yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, no, I it all all of this, I think it's uh it's it's genuine, and that's like you can't you can't edit out genuine uh you know personal uh experiences, uh, and that's why I try not to be uh too over the top with editing, but uh everything stays in, including what I was talking about.

SPEAKER_00 2:10:57

Tonight's meal is uh meatballs. So we've got um I'm I made them earlier, so I've got beef and pork meatballs, just for those of you who are interested. In tomato sauce, I'm got I've got mashed potato that I'll do with those and some green beans, and uh Dutch apple cake for dessert.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:16

That sounds I'm a type one diabetic, and there's portions of that meal that sound delectable, and like I'd have to take a lot of insulin for it. But um on on kind of on that point, I I've always been really inspired with how uh consistent uh you are with being um on social media and doing like your feeds and stuff and just kind of like talking about things that are going on um with your craft and whatnot. And so I mean I I it's ignorant for me to assume that anybody's l that's listening here is uh not familiar with your work in some way, shape, or form. But if you get the opportunity, what is it every is it every Saturday?

SPEAKER_02 2:11:54

Yeah, every Sunday.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:55

Every yeah, every Sunday, um uh time, right? Um you can you can see you on Instagram's live feed and you talk about things that are super cool. Do you get a lot of interaction from people on those?

SPEAKER_00 2:12:08

Um not a huge amount. So my uh daughter reckons that I should call them my Sunday morning monologues. Apparently apparently Instagram live feed should be more interactive but I I I haven't managed that. Some people sometimes people ask me questions and throw me off completely which um yeah which means that I then get lost um and forget where I am in whatever story I'm doing. So they really are Sunday monologues. I do them at 12 o'clock UK time so whatever the time that is but they're always on my what is it called on my grid afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:48

So you're more than welcome to have a look at them. I I try and do a little kind of pracy of what I've talked about that session just in case anybody ever wants to go back and um look at them.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:02

I this week I showed an acquisition that I had I've um got an amazing presentation exhibition Georgian pair of scissors um and oh I did a thing on needle making and but it depends every that it's normally on scissor making uh sometimes you get the occasional bra or corset thrown in it depends what I'm doing but I haven't been doing a lot of sewing lately so it's mainly mainly scissor making yeah well don't stop doing them because I even like I I I watch them all the time um and it's yeah it's fascinating to me especially like artists I'm tracking um to get that perspective there's there's always something to pull apart it's the same way with podcasts like I'm kind of like sometimes I listen to them sometimes I don't uh but when I do uh it always inspires uh in some way and so I stopped doing live stuff uh quite a while ago because no nobody even came to view them and I don't know that anybody actually came to look at them afterwards so I was like I don't I'm just not interesting enough but you are interesting and I think that everybody needs to uh like pay attention to what you're doing on the you can kind of listen to my like podcasts and then if I say something you can look over to the screen and see whether I'm showing something um it's mainly talking so yeah yeah come and come and have a look come and join me um yeah I'm there every Sunday yeah well on that note thank you so much it's been a pleasure um I'm even more of a fan than I was before and um for anybody interested in taking up the the um the craft of of shears and cutlery I really think that you should use uh Grace as a model for that and I'm sure she's willing to ask questions or answer questions and things so absolutely always here if anybody fancies making scissors. Yeah learn something guys uh scissors they're they're the bee's knees I am I'm going to try to dabble in it myself well thank you thank you ever so much yeah absolutely thank you for listening to another episode of the Good Old Blades podcast remember that you are loved and God bless you