So how do we define what was to us "Schrade"? Was it the end product of the efforts of Albert and Henry Baer in consolodating three independent privately owned companies into the single privately held Imperial Schrade Corporation? But that would then have to include all the knife companies that came under Baer ownership, would it not? There were indeed four companies, not three ultimately controlled by the Baer family. The fourth survives still.
Or was it the continuation of production from what Imperial Schrade considered it's founding year, 1904 to it's end of operations in 2004? But the people who designed the knives and were the most proficient cutlers, and the long term managers of the company scarcely missed a beat in founding and starting up production of the Walden Knife Company, AKA Canal Street Cutlery.
Since we include Imperial, Schrade, and Ulster as "Schrades" for our collector interest purposes, and include the products of those companies before the acquisition by the Baers, Schrade actually was begun in 1874, the root year of Walden Knife Company which became Ulster which became a Baer holding in 1941. Or began in 1917 when Imperial Knife Company was established by the Mirando brothers. Or in 1876 when Charles Sherwood convertd a grain mill in Camillus, NY into a cutlery company? Do we include the work of George Schrade prior to 1904? After he left Schrade Cutlery in 1910? What about George Schrade Knife Company knives made under ownership of Boker after 1956? And what of Kingston Cutlery?
The fact remains that Stewart Taylor bought not the Imperial Schrade Corporation, or any other predecessor company, but the names of the knives and companies. Stewert Taylor's company does not manufacture anything that I am aware of, but is rather an importer of goods made in China and possibly elsewhere. If we are to in any fashion include his "product" in the legacy of Schrade, then we must trace the beginning to the 1865 Bodenheim, Meyer, and Kastor of New York City, importers of guns, cutlery, and hardware from Belgium, England, and Germany. No wait. Henry Bodenheim was in business long before that in Vicksburg Mississippi. (Henry Baer called him "Grand Dad"). Oh, nope, we have to go back to a small village in Italy where the Mirando family were cottage industry cutlers for many generations.
IF Schrade still exists, it is only as an empty shell of a corporation listed on court documents as being in receivership. It has no assets, no facilities, no employees and produces no knives. The only knives today being produced directly by Schrade cutlers are being made with the CSC tangstamp, and possibly the Camillus tangstamp depending on your point of view. No real Schrade knives are today being made in China, only poor copies which, IMHO, are not included in the lineage any more than the knives made by Bear and Son, United, or any other company using Schrade patterns and trademarks. They are bastids, not Schrades.
Codger
