Accepting that the question can only be answered in a retrospective / historical context, my questions to you would be: if we aren't presently in a "golden age" of custom knives - has there been one to date? If so, when was it and what were its defining characteristics? As you have been involved in the field in a broad capacity for some time, you are as well siutated as most to answer the question.
And given that you have pointed to several factors which you feel are not (necessarily) indicative of a golden age at present, you no doubt have an understanding of what criteria could / should be used in the assessment. Do share.
Roger
In my opinion the field of modern handmade knives is too new to have that kind of history that would qualify for a golden age. Give it 100 years and see when things were the best they have ever been. If then looking back, it was now, then maybe it could be. I don't see it in comparison with two moments in time which I feel were "golden eras".
To be a golden era it has to be a time when the finest were ever made, and afterwards the quality, workmanship, declined, and those original designs were copied by those who came later.
So for knives, the Golden Age 1. Bowies. 1830-1845.
Why? In a day when firearms were unreliable, a good knife was often a primary weapon. So on one 19th century day on a sandbar across the river from Natchez a strong man survived being stabbed and dispatched an opponent while a sword cane was sticking from his chest.
The story captured the imagination of the public, helped because the river was the expressway of the time, and the story spread. Everyone wanted a knife like Bowie's, then they asked for Bowie's knife, and finally asked for a Bowie knife.
To meet that demand, simply stated, some of the finest Bowie knives ever made were produced. Made to the requirements that a man's life could actually depend on the quality, the quickness, the balance, the strength. Large knives were never the same after this. And the knives made during that brief era were the finest Bowie knives ever made, in my opinion.
In the modern era there are only a handful of makers who understand the balance of those knives. Moran did, Fisk does. Not a lot of others. And unless you've handled a few hundred original Bowies from that day, I'm not sure you can understand what I'm saying with words or pictures in a book. There's so much more to it than that.
You can only know it when you pick up one of those original Bowies and feel that electric tingle course up your arm. Coffin hilts were so designed because they functioned, not for looks. Hold a genuine Woodhead and you'll see.
And those designs from that Golden Era? Copied by the best knifemakers today. Good Bowies, but few are comparable with the original, unfortunately. You cannot make a golden age with copies. Golden age 1.
And it was an era that ended. When the percussion cap improved the reliability of fireams and came into widespread use, there was no need for a primary weapon knife. And with less importance placed upon it, the quality faded away. (Just as I predict the quality of finely balanced knives today will fade away to the "I'm on the internet and I'll save money by not going to knife shows" collectors).
Golden age 2.
Late 19th Century Sheffield. Rodgers, IXL, Greenhough, John Blyde. You can see some examples in the Claussen et. al. Exhibition knife book, but again it is difficult to appreciate until you hold those knives, and look at the intricate filework inside and out, those gold inlaid tortoise handles, the Yorkshire rose engraved pin heads, a carved pearl fruit knife with 100 or more sterling silver pins inlaid in them. A polish that came from holding a knife on a lead faced wheel to get what the Sheffielder's called the "black polish."
No one since then has ever come close. Even the best makers who copy the designs (and here is the point too, they "copy" those designs), still miss it somehow. First they cannot safely duplicate that polish, and there is a classic picture in an old Rodgers history that shows the Rodgers workers who had been there for over 50 years. 30 or so white bearded fellows who were some of the best at what they did that ever lived.
Fifty years! How many 50-year makers are there? Moran, Hibben, not many more.
And more significant than all was the fact that those 50-year-makers were making knives in a place where the average age of a cutler ended in his early 40's.
Now most of those knives from that era were not sole-authorship, which is a big thing among modern knifemakers. But any of them COULD have made a spectacular knife from start to finish if they wanted. It was not a requirement of the time.
And that era ended between 1914 and 1918, when the next generation of great cutlers met their end in the muddy trenches of France.
One Sheffield native told me that one day in 1916 the Hallamshire based regiments were decimated in a single attack at the battle of Ypres, and that after that single day Sheffield cutlery was never the same.
Compare those knives, and those circumstances to today's knifemaking scene. Golden age? Ask me in 90-100 years.
LOL
