Hello Nick: If there is any knife in the world of knives that I dislike, it is the 'early european quillion dagger', I have tried to like them, but can't. The knife I made as my 'art' dagger had a very insignificant (but perfect) Damascus blade, to (in my mind) indicate the useless nature of this kind of blade. From the blade back I went all out, a supreme S shaped guard, symetrical but oposite. crafted all by hand, no lathe to turn out an artivicial facit of man and machine. The handle was of absolute supreme sheep horn, the only I have ever seen with green in it. I had saved the horn for years for this knife. The sheath was crafted from a piece of elk horn, a majestic king of nature who had died of old age. The horn had laid in the forest for years, was mouse eaten and allmost gone. I reinforced it and developed a compliment to the dagger. All significant of the tenacious hold man tends to cherish for what was, the ideas at least, some real - some not. There was significant reality in the knife, but not the blade.
The judges did not buy it, they wanted a blade of times past that to me was, is, and always will be useless. They accepted my othere masters blades, but not the dagger. I had a year to make a real one. I did and it passed. I still look at the event with highly mixed emotions. Art, if it exists in the world of knives cannnot be achieved by a copy of past dreams of man. I feel that if there is to be an 'art' knife to be judged, it should have emotiion, thought, qualities beyone copy. I had better quit the discussion now, it is kind of off the topic of this thread, maybe.
