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- Jan 21, 2000
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To My Hog Brethren
Having just attended my first Blade Show, and having been newly dubbed Will Pork, Hog of the Round Trough, I’d like to propose a toast. Since there are no captives in this audience, I’ll make it the long version
:
We don’t really know how long ago the first edged tools were devised by our ancestors, but in the 1930’s, archaeologist Louis Leakey discovered a site in Olduvai Gorge in the Great Rift Valley of Africa where our forbears were making edged stone tools and weapons more than two and a half million years ago.
We have little to tell us what our distant ancestors felt for their blades, but we do know that edged tools and weapons were possibly the first man-modified instruments. It seems likely those first edged creations must have inspired both awe and pride of ownership in the user.
My archaeologist neighbor once told me the measure of the difference between the capabilities of Cro-Magnon man and Neanderthal man, whom Cro-Magnon displaced, is typically demonstrated by citing how much linear edge each could produce from a pound of obsidian. Neanderthal got about 12 inches and Cro-Magnon about 12 feet--an order of magnitude. These were entire sub-species of humans whom anthropologists have come to define by their blade-making abilities. The metals ages also have been used to categorize whole chronological segments of human history, largely by improvements in blade materials.
Throughout recorded history, the centers of the bladesmiths' arts have commanded a reverence and respect unrivalled by any similar endeavor. What other issue from the hand of man can claim to have given rise to the reputations of entire cities--Damascus, Toledo, Solingen, Sheffield, Seki? Blades—only blades.
From the defense of innocents to the conquests of empires; from the blades on the belts of armies defending the existence of civilizations to the blades of lone men surviving in lands beyond the pale of civilization--the blade has been there whenever we have dared and prevailed. Elegantly. Beautifully. Simply. Utterly.
And yet, in the intervening thousands of millennia since the Olduvai tribes were making their stone knives, no one has EVER made a blade as strong AND as tough--and as worthy of our trust--as a Busse-made INFI knife.
So let us lift a glass to The Man--the REAL--Man of Steel:
Jerry Busse
Hear Hear My Porcine Brothers and Sisters!
And Thanks Be To All.
Having just attended my first Blade Show, and having been newly dubbed Will Pork, Hog of the Round Trough, I’d like to propose a toast. Since there are no captives in this audience, I’ll make it the long version
:We don’t really know how long ago the first edged tools were devised by our ancestors, but in the 1930’s, archaeologist Louis Leakey discovered a site in Olduvai Gorge in the Great Rift Valley of Africa where our forbears were making edged stone tools and weapons more than two and a half million years ago.
We have little to tell us what our distant ancestors felt for their blades, but we do know that edged tools and weapons were possibly the first man-modified instruments. It seems likely those first edged creations must have inspired both awe and pride of ownership in the user.
My archaeologist neighbor once told me the measure of the difference between the capabilities of Cro-Magnon man and Neanderthal man, whom Cro-Magnon displaced, is typically demonstrated by citing how much linear edge each could produce from a pound of obsidian. Neanderthal got about 12 inches and Cro-Magnon about 12 feet--an order of magnitude. These were entire sub-species of humans whom anthropologists have come to define by their blade-making abilities. The metals ages also have been used to categorize whole chronological segments of human history, largely by improvements in blade materials.
Throughout recorded history, the centers of the bladesmiths' arts have commanded a reverence and respect unrivalled by any similar endeavor. What other issue from the hand of man can claim to have given rise to the reputations of entire cities--Damascus, Toledo, Solingen, Sheffield, Seki? Blades—only blades.
From the defense of innocents to the conquests of empires; from the blades on the belts of armies defending the existence of civilizations to the blades of lone men surviving in lands beyond the pale of civilization--the blade has been there whenever we have dared and prevailed. Elegantly. Beautifully. Simply. Utterly.
And yet, in the intervening thousands of millennia since the Olduvai tribes were making their stone knives, no one has EVER made a blade as strong AND as tough--and as worthy of our trust--as a Busse-made INFI knife.
So let us lift a glass to The Man--the REAL--Man of Steel:
Jerry Busse
Hear Hear My Porcine Brothers and Sisters!
And Thanks Be To All.
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