- Joined
- Dec 2, 2005
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- 69,181
Mortons cutlery shop was an Aladdins cave of knives. The large window display was absolutely chocker-block with patterns of every type, so many crammed together you could barely see where one knife ended and another began. You had to almost fight through the door because there were large display cases on every single bit of wall, and there was barely any room in the shop because the place was packed to the rafters with cutlery of every kind.
I spent a lot of time looking in the window of Mortons, me and my pals would stand there for half an hour at a time. Sometimes wed go inside, but it really was so cramped in there you couldnt turn round, so mainly wed just look in the window. Then every now and again wed go in and buy something.
The first knife I ever bought from there was a small whittle-tang sheath knife, with a stacked leather handle. They only cost £1 or so. I bought pocket knives from there, but mainly I bought sheath knives.
When I was 17 I went travelling, and Mortons supplied me with a knife which served me well. I gifted it to a friend before I returned home nine months later.
It wasnt long, just a few months, before I got itchy feet again, and I went to Mortons to get another knife. At £9, the knife I chose was probably the most expensive in the shop, this was in 1979. It looked pretty nice with the rosewood handle and brass bolsters, and the mirror-polished carbon-steel blades, it reminded me of the Buck knives Id seen on sale in Easyriders magazine. Like many Sheffield knives, then and now, it bore no makers mark, just something turned out by one of the citys innumerable Little Mesters.
That knife worked hard, and this time I brought it home with me, after carrying it halfway round the world. I carried it pretty regularly for a long time, but I got better knives, and it saw less and less use.
In the early 1990s, I was working on my own knife, the U1, with a cutler called Stuart Mitchell. Stuart had been a jobbing cutler most of his working life, hafting and finishing knives for the big Sheffield cutlers, and later setting up in business under his wife name, as Pat Mitchell Cutlers. I was showing Stuart some of my knives one day and he pulled out the knife I had bought from Mortons in 1979, recognising it as his own work. He told me hed made hundreds of that pattern (and was probably paid a pittance for the privilege).
Stuart and Mortons are long gone, and the knife has been away from me for the past few years. I got it back today though, and gave it a sharpen and polish. Itll never be a great knife, but I dont think it looks bad after 35 years of use. It certainly holds a lot of memories for me, and when I hold it in my hand, its hard to imagine its the same knife I gutted fish with round a campfire in France as a teenager. I might even carry it a few times this winter.
I'd hoped to include a photo of the old shop, hoping I could find one on the internet, but I guess nobody really thought to photograph the place - It was sandwiched just between the dole office featured in the dreadful Full Monty film and The Limit nightclub, where the likes of Pulp and Tone Deaf Leppard (as they were known locally) cut their teeth.
