Joss said:
I've not seen Jewel or Ice, but I've never liked the King Tut Dagger. It's always been way too precious and overloaded for my taste. Not only is it not a functional knife, I don't think it's a pretty object.
As someone said about some other showy piece "just because you can, doesn't mean you should".
Joss,
I shared your opinion, until I met Phil Lobred, held the knife, and heard the story.
Buster considered it the first of his Legacy Knives, of which I believe Fire and Ice is the third, Knives as art in a way that had not been done before, and probably would not be done after, not by a single person(later, with Julie, make that two people)
.
Phil is an Egyptophile, and loved the idea, he approached Buster, and the deal was struck. It is a replica, the only one like it in the world, something that can be seen at knife shows, here in the US, instead of a museum in Cairo. That in an of itself, is a good enough reason to do it, if it needed one, but there is more.
It drove Buster to learn new skills, like repousse, granulation and enameling, which he had not done before, but has certainly done since. It drove Buster, and a lot of other makers to learn, and improve their own engraving. In short, it is probably a physical manifestation of what came to improve art knives as a whole. I'm not a big art knife guy, either.
Now, as far as practicality, it will stab into and through a man as much as any dagger, at least once, but that is not what it was created for.
It was created purely and simply as art, and that is what it is.
Best Regards,
STeven Garsson
