Knife skills
Lynda Hallinan sharpens more than her wits on a fiery Father’s Day date with her husband.
On the night I met my husband Jason, I was boogieing to Bon Jovi on a rugby club dance floor when I slipped in a puddle of spilt beer and broke my arm.
On the night James Conquer met his wife Maureen, he was at a Roger Waters concert at Auckland’s Vector Arena. It wasn’t so much love at first sight as a serendipitous seating snafu that saw James, recently widowed, accidentally sit beside Maureen, recently divorced. They hit it off, or at least they did until the rightful ticket holders turned up and told James to sling his hook back to his own seat.
Love moves in mysterious ways. On the day my husband and I met James and Maureen, we all got a little hot under the collar. Sparks flew. Daggers were thrown. Steel hearts were hardened. Rough edges were sanded and iron wills tested. And then the knives came out.
“The babysitter’s on her way,” I’d told my husband that morning. “Surprise! We’re off on an early Father’s Day date.” He eyed me suspiciously, with good reason, for on previous occasions I’ve dragged him off to judge giant pumpkins, scoff peacock curry at a feral feast, pat newborn buffalo, admire vanilla orchids in Tonga and quaff Hokonui Moonshine on an impromptu honeymoon in Gore.
But this time I’d sharpened my act. I’d booked us both in for a day-long knife-making workshop at Forgotten Arts, the school of old-time skills that the Conquers have established in their stable block in Clevedon, south-east of Auckland. As horses trot in and out, Maureen – a chef and international apiculturist – greets her guests with pikelets made on the wood stove and mugs of tea sweetened with honey, while James fires up his gas forge.
I’d been to Forgotten Arts before, on a girls’ day out, for a hedgerow weaving workshop; we made wreaths and baskets from foraged willow, wild banksia roses and trailing ivy. But visitors can also learn how to make soap, cheese, felt and beeswax candles or seek more manly pursuits such as pyrography (red hot poker work), bronze casting, leatherwork and blade cutting.
Knife-making has been an art form for aeons, or at least two million years. Archaeological digs date the first crude knives, wrought from slivers of bone or shards of rock, back to the Lower Paleolithic period. Though technology now allows for bronze, steel and titanium blades, the knife’s core functions – attack, defence and sorting out what’s for dinner – remain unchanged.
Knife design, however, has evolved in myriad ways. There are surgeon’s scalpels, butcher’s cleavers, barbershop razors and special blades to prise open everything from letters to oysters. There are instruments of injury – bayonets, daggers, shivs and shanks – and ceremonial symbols, from the small sgian-dubh tucked into the socks of Scots in kilts to the sheathed kirpans carried by Sikhs.
Remember when knives, or rather knowing which ones to use for what, were a measure of social standing?
The well-bred filled their cutlery drawers with flat-bladed butter knives, fruit knives, dessert knives, serrated bread knives, sharp steak knives and ornate pointy-tipped ones for fish.
(An episode of the ABC radio show By Design once asked: “Is the fish knife our most pretentious utensil?” Its scalloped blade, the presenter
“Remember when knives were a measure of social standing?”
argued, was either the epitome of gentility or superfluously vulgar, given that two forks can just as easily flick the small bones free of the flesh.)
Hunting, fishing, fighting: ever noticed how men of all ages seem to have a primal attraction to pocket knives? But when I caught my children having a pretend sword fight with, ahem, their Dad’s fish filleting knives, all the blokes in my family got a stern lecture about knife safety and storage.
I’d hate to think what could ensue should my boys ever lay their little hands on the knife my husband made at Forgotten Arts. While I opted for a slender steel blade with brass bolster and rimu handle, Jason turned out a fearsome looking thing with a brutish blade reminiscent of a pig hunter’s gutting dagger crossed with a Zambian ceremonial ikul. (He’s a big man, with big hands. The design was purely practical, he claims.)
Suffice to say, at the end of the day both of us were ridiculously chuffed with our efforts, and I can’t tell you how pleasing it is to carve a leg of lamb with a knife cut, forged, tempered, shaped, sanded, polished and sharpened by your own hand.
As an added bonus, our handmade utensils will one day become family heirlooms. Just as I treasure my greatgrandmother Susannah’s battered silver gravy spoon, my husband slices his steak with an elegant knife he got on a holiday with family friends from Minnesota. It was crafted by a native Alaskan artisan, the blade cut from recycled steel while the handle was carved from caribou antler.
If you’re the superstitious sort, remember that crossed knives cause quarrels, while gifting a knife to a lover is said to inadvertently sever the relationship. So I say it’s much wiser, and more fun, to give the man in your life a knife-making workshop voucher.
(Incidentally, no knives were involved in James and Maureen’s second stab at love. Instead, James conspired with Vector Arena’s staff to open the stadium for a private afterhours visit. He led Maureen back to the row of seats where they first met and, as Another Brick in the Wall played over the public address system, went down on one knee to pop the question. A sharp move indeed.) AWW
Forgotten Arts, Clevedon, Auckland, forgottenarts.co.nz.