József Sziráky 19 century knife maker, what can you tell me?

T. Erdelyi

T. Erdelyi

Joined
Feb 3, 2001
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I've wanted a Traditional Hungarian pocket knife for as long as I can remember, when I went back home to Hungary in '06 with my daughter my cousin had given me my grandfather's knife, the knife he used too cut pieces of kielbasa and szalona for our afternoon meals.

That was a Polish Gerlach(sp?) Pruning blade...

prunera.jpg


You can see more pics and read more about this knife in this link, http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/member.php/114049-T-Erdelyi

Since then I've seen a few threads on Hungarian knife makers, I met Laci Szabo and IIRC I see that Spyderco will be releasing a knife inspired by a Hungarian knife maker...

spyderco_amsterdammeet2013_prototype_hungarianethnicfolder.jpg


Which leads me to the thread title, over 20 years ago when I first moved from Jersey to PA I had gone to my first estate auction and as luck would have it the estate had a lot of pocket knives up for auction, the prices were fair I spent maybe $100 and came home with about a dozen old knives most in great condition and still quite serviceable but the one I wanted sold in a box lot, I went up to $30 on the box but some lady outbid me and hit the pearl lobster pattern I had wanted.

That's the knife in the bottom right of the pic.

069-1.jpg


With nothing to lose I asked the woman if she would mind selling me the knife in box lot she bought, to my joy she pulled the knife out the box and asked me for $10. I quickly handed her a bill a stuffed the knife in my pocket, when I got home much to my dismay I noticed the beautiful pearl scale on one side had a chip in the end of the handle.

Not to worry, it was still a solid knife with healthy springs and the F&F were exquisite, walk and talk superb other than the chip this was high class looking knife, it had silver hardware, some machine work to the brass liners, it even had what looked like a place for a toothpick and tweezers ala Victorinox SAKs.

So I touched up the blade which was razor sharp after a few stores on the stone and with my limited access to the internet back then tried to research the knife, the only mark on the knife was "SZIRAKIJ", not much luck there. So I added it to my collection knowing very little about it and taking it out on special occasions to put in my pocket and carry.

Fast forward a couple of years and I find my self at a knife show and I show the knife to a collector who had a table full of traditional patterned knives, but tells me it's a Lobster pattern and pretty old...

The only reason he said it was an old knife and probably dated back to the late 1800s because of the tweezers which has what I thought was a spoon for sniffing cocaine that turned out to actually be an ear pick popular before the invention of the Q-tip.

A few more years go by and I'm content in knowing that is an old knife, a lobster pattern and probably made in Europe in the late 19th century and it was mine.

I even posted it in BRLs forum with very little info garnered over the subsequent years but I was still happy and continued carrying the knife when it tickled my fancy.

Today I was going through traditionals box and grabbed the lobster for my pocket and threw it in with my Case Sowbelly, well about an hour ago I was looking at the knife and decided to give the name another try and then I saw it, Sziraky, József, 19th century Austro-Hungarian knife maker.

So now I know more about this knife than I have for the last 20+ years but it still adding enough, now I wanna know more so now I turn to you guys for any help you can give me, here's the only pic I have right now, I'll post some more pics when I get a chance, so what say guys any thoughts, links or websites to help me out?
 
T. Erdelyi said:
Unless your Hungarian... :)
Click to expand...
:thumbup::thumbup:

Good luck in your search, Ted. Maybe some current knifemakers of Hungarian descent might have some info. Jerry Rados comes to mind.
 
I know he's credited with the fish shaped knife made back in the late 19th century but that's about all I can find for now. I have a call in to my cousin back in Kunsziget, near Gyor, he was the head of the Hungarian Secret Service back when the communist were in power, he has access to all kinds of neat historical records. I've got him looking for a Hungarian Special Forces/Paratrooper throwing knife, the one where us use the sheath to throw the knife with.

I'll keep looking...
 
Ted,

I know it isn't a knife my Mad Hungarian friend, but do you happen to have a fokos? Still traditional bladeware of a sorts.

- Christian
 
kamagong said:
Ted,

I know it isn't a knife my Mad Hungarian friend, but do you happen to have a fokos? Still traditional bladeware of a sorts.

- Christian
Click to expand...

My grandfather used one around fields back during the war it was one of the few things they didn't take away from them, he told me stories about using it on the communist soldiers when they came to town looking for food and tried to break into the house.

They are a handy tool... :) oh and no I don't have one, last time I went back home I had very little room after packing all the homemade palinka and cognac...
 
Hi Ted,

I just found this thread, and as fate would have it, just yesterday read two Hungarian short stories from the late Century about master Sziráky.
His name is pronounced 'Yoh-zheff’ 'Seer-ah-kee’, with the stress on the first syllable , the ‘ee’-s are short, the ‘aaah’ is long (what you say when the doctor tells you to open your mouth to see your throat).

The following info is taken from a popular Hungarian knife related blog I will link at the end of the post.

Joseph Sziráky, frequently spelled also as Sziráki (Sziráky József or Sziráki József, written the Hungarian way) was one of the greatest - if not THE greatest - Hungarian master cutlers of the 19th Century, and certainly the most famous among them all. His fame was such, that he was the hero of, or was mentioned in several short stories (novellas) written by some of the greatest Hungarian writers of the 19th Century, including Kálmán Mikszáth and István Tömörkény. Given, that the Hungarian literature could never gain broader recognition, his fame was doomed to remain limited to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and later to Hungary.

He was a pre-eminent member of the once famous cutlery industry established in the Southern part of the Empire, and now Hungary, in the city of Szeged.
A bustling multinational city, with its Hungarian, German, Serbian, Slovak, Jewish population, a regional center of agricultural commerce and industry located near the Tisa (Tisza) river, Szeged (similarly to other Hungarian cities at the time) lured in the early 19th century several German cutlers to establish local cutlery manufacture.
The cutlers brought with themselves the German guild system, and that system - in some form - remained central to the Hungarian cutlery manufacture even to this very day. Even the Hungarian cutlery-making terminology is of German origin to this very day (even though the terms are not strictly German any more, due to the transformation they had underwent in the Hungarian environment).

Among the founders of the Szeged Cutlers Guild was also a cutler called Sziráky Mátyás (Matthias Sziráky), who opened his workshop in 1825. His son, Sziráky József (1832-1899) inherited and expanded his father’s business. As an apprentice, he visited Austria, Italy and Switzerland. The practice of wandering apprenticeship guaranteed that the young artisans not only improved their skills, but also learned the newest techniques, methods and stylistic vogues of their time.
When József returned home, he worked as a maker of medical instruments, but soon he was making mainly knives (even though there are records that he was also making ‘fokos’).

His most famous pocketknife pattern is the fish shaped knife (halas bicska). According to contemporary anecdotal sources, after a devastating flood of the Tisza river at Szeged in the 1870’s, the then already famous master was walking on the newly built levies with the supervisor of the earthworks, count Lajos Tisza, when they saw a fish leaping from the river. Count Tisza asked master Sziráky if he could make a pocketknife like the fish they saw. The master soon obliged, and the famous fish form pocketknife was born.
Traditionally it was made with mother of pearl scales and it became one of the most popular patterns in Hungary, especially around Szeged. József Sziráky's descendants continued the trade until 1939.

Here is the link to the blog I mentioned at the beginning of this post:

http://kesportal.hu/2012/01/12/sziraki-uram-es-az-angliusok/

There you can see two of József Sziráky’s surviving pocketknives, both are from the collection of master Ferenc Kocsis, today’s preeminent traditional pocket knife maker in Hungary.

Also, a link to another short story, about buying a pocketknife in master József Sziráky's workshop:

http://kesportal.hu/2012/02/10/bicskavasarlas/

These two posts I linked above were done by the Hungarian knife enthusiast Edrose (Rózsa Edvárd), and also contain novellas by the Hungarian writers I mentioned above.

Edrose writes his own separate Opinel knife blog too, which besides in Hungarian, can be enjoyed in French and English versions too:

http://opinelno08.blogspot.hu/2013/02/lets-start-with-introduction.html


Ted, if your lobster is indeed made by master Sziráky (or in his workshop under his supervision), you have a REAL TREASURE, my friend! It would make you an instant celebrity (and in the same time a target of green envy) among both the Hungarian knife nuts and people obsessed with Hungarian history and literature.

I am happy, that the knife ended up not only at a person, who would value it as a nicely made pocketknife, but who also happens to be of Hungarian descent, so would value its cultural importance too. :)
 
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Thanks for the info and the links that was way more than I had found, I had read some of it but not to that detail. This was picked up at an estate sale in a box lot for a couple $.

Thanks again, I think it might be time to send Mr Levine a pm... in the mean time I need to get some better pics to post here's the only one I could find right now, it's the one on the bottom right.

069-1.jpg


The pearl is so rich, so warm and so deep it looks like it's an inch thick.
 
Ted, good luck, I hope it is an authentic one!

In the meantime enjoy some really nice Hungarian traditional patterns pictured in this link:

http://player.hu/havi-tema/a-hagyomanyos-magyar-bicska/

The knives in the top pic are from Kocsis Ferenc.

Since you mentioned eating bacon and kielbasa with your Grandfather’s knife, you might be interested that there is a pocketknife pattern named after eating bacon, since it was used mainly to slice thin slices of cured bacon to eat with bread and onions - a traditional meal of the common, hard working, and frequently poor folk in Hungary.
The long thin bladed knife in the middle of the top pic, resembling a melon tester, is called 'szalonnázó bicska’ : literally 'pocketknife for eating bacon' (it is also used to slice the ‘kolbász’ too).
 
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