SICAC 2008 pictorial (heavy with pics)

Yeah right... rub it in. Now I even feel worse because I couldn't be there...:grumpy:

Serious,

Nice knives, nice pics!:thumbup:

Merci beaucoup!

Kind regards,

Jos
 
I really like the fixed blade 3rd from the left(the largest in the row) in this pic. Are there any local (US) makers doing something like this with a decently short waiting list?

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Thanks for sharing that Flavius! It was good to meet you and Patrick.

I'll post my pics later on. I have a few that don't overlap with yours.
 
Flava, thanks for the pics. I went yesterday (Saturday) and had a good time. A few remarks though. The show was smaller then I expected and had hoped for (and man what was the room warm....no hot). Although there were good/excellent makers present (Reverdy, Slobodian, Hogstrom, Andersson, Johansson, to name a few) the types of knife that attract me the most were under represented. The makers I talked to all mentioned that sales where slow. In my experience prices were high in comparison to the US market. To give an example. Reverdy had a great looking hunter with cool damascus on his table but €6000 (or $9000) was a bit steep in my book.

Well I walked away with one knife and two orders (Andersson and Hogstrom)so all in all it was a well spend weekend.

Marcel
 
Well... As far as I'm concerned, I'm quite disappointed this year. Yes the room was pretty warm. Yes a lot of knife types were under represented and I didn't see anything that really caught my eyes. As always, the good point is to meet new fellows (Flava, Joss) and to speak with great makers (Roulin, Reverdy, Bennica...). Nice people as always, bad show this year, would I say...
 
Patrick, I don't have a comparison because this was my first SICAC. Although the rest of the weekend was quite enjoyable (diner, Notre Dame and so on) I will for sure think twice to go again next year.

Marcel
 
Marcel54 said:
Flava, thanks for the pics. I went yesterday (Saturday) and had a good time. A few remarks though. The show was smaller then I expected and had hoped for (and man what was the room warm....no hot). Although there were good/excellent makers present (Reverdy, Slobodian, Hogstrom, Andersson, Johansson, to name a few) the types of knife that attract me the most were under represented. The makers I talked to all mentioned that sales where slow. In my experience prices were high in comparison to the US market. To give an example. Reverdy had a great looking hunter with cool damascus on his table but €6000 (or $9000) was a bit steep in my book.

Well I walked away with one knife and two orders (Andersson and Hogstrom)so all in all it was a well spend weekend.

Marcel
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The sales were slow for some makers and very fast for others. I found quite a lot of interesting knives so I'm pretty happy about it. What the Paris show lacks and I hope it will improve in the future is this: more american makers :)
 
flava said:
The sales were slow for some makers and very fast for others. I found quite a lot of interesting knives so I'm pretty happy about it. What the Paris show lacks and I hope it will improve in the future is this: more american makers :)
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I got to talk with Scott Slobodian about SICAC when I went to the Guild show. He has been to 12 or so of the 18. Scott said that the show used to be bigger, but a series of location changes, including one where the show was in a less than desirable building, may have turned some folks off. The cost of the show is pretty high even by New York, etc. show standards. As for the size, monster shows like the Blade Show of today and the Guild show of the early 90's kind of distort our perception of what a knife show should look like. I have tried to find out what the big shows are in Europe and from what I can tell, most of the larger ones seem to be in the 100-150 table range like SICAC. From what little I have seen, I think that our Euro brethren could support a 400+ table mega show somewhere, but it is a question of someone with the talent and drive putting one together plus a good bit of luck, naturally. Location AND cost would be key. Paris is great for flights and it's a really cool place, but it is a bit pricey. The only saving grace is that SICAC is in a part of town with a ton of mom and pop hotels that aren't Motel 6, but they aren't the Plaza Athenee either, so they won't bankrupt you.
 
Thanks Flava for the show review and photos and additional info. Great to hear from collectors that where there and their opinions. I'm sure many North American collectors would suffer sticker shock at that and other Euro shows.
 
Murray White said:
Thanks Flava for the show review and photos and additional info. Great to hear from collectors that where there and their opinions. I'm sure many North American collectors would suffer sticker shock at that and other Euro shows.
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As I am taking a little "working vacation" to the Gembloux show, I certainly hope that the European buyers are used to whatwould constitute "sticker shock" for American collectors :thumbup:;)
 
Here's my little contribution. I posted as a stand alone on the CKCA forum, but it belongs with Flavius' review.

For the first time in 12+ years I attended the SICAC this year, and I thought I'd share a quick review with folks here.

Overall, my take is that the prices were fairly high. There were quite a few museum-level pieces, but most were folders. There were very few top quality fixed blades. There are a lot of "pseudo-authentic" folders meant to evocate such or such regional root of France, but generally I found those fairly formulaic and not that interesting. There was a couple (very) high quality displays of carving, and lots of nice damascus. Very few US-style bowies were on display. There was a significant showing of the "pseudo-rustic tactical", of which Fred Perrin was the most well known to me. He had a table covered with his work.

I didn't have any cash, and I wasn't really looking for anything. With this said I saw a couple things that I would have considered buying, even though they were very pricy.

In a medium-sized show such as this you really come to appreciate the variety that purveyors bring. There were a few of them at the SICAC, and it was fun to see a slightly broader sample. Also helping in the diversity were a few makers from the US and elsewhere.

Following this are some pics and random comments...
 
OK, first pics are 4 of the 5 knives Charly Bennica had on his table. I was aggreably surprised by Bennica, who was pretty jovial & smily (he was very busy though and I couldn't really talk to him).

First a "simple" hunter in mosaic damascus. Bennica started his knife making career making such knives 15+ years ago. I still find that they look great and have a unique personality:

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Two of his classy folders (there was a 3rd one that was a subhilt, but I couldn't get a good pic of it, see Flavius' post for that):

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And last an amazing "Squale" subhilt integral:

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Daniel Vally is a well established French maker who does a lot of powerful hunters in multibar damascus. What first caught my eyes were those 2 engraved pieces - I don't recall if they were of integral construction:

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Large damascus hunter:
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And a series of multibar fighters and hunters:
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