Blades of glory
ALIST of extinct or endangered crafts has just been published by the Heritage Crafts Association. Making sieves and riddles or cricket balls are, apparently, extinct. Horsecollar making, paper marbling and saw-making are endangered, they say. But what, I wonder, about knife sharpening?
I wonder because I recently visited my local knife sharpener in Suffolk, who’s obviously been whetting steel for years (if that’s the right expression). He has a small, standalone wooden workshop in his garden, complete with electric whetstone.
I took him eight and, on my following visit, another 10. He remembers the days when members of his trade would travel around with a special bicycle on which the sharpener was attached. I remember the man who used to come to our front door in York and get plenty of business from us.
Hew, on the other hand, had his very own knife sharpener, a cousin who was a working blacksmith with a smithy in Devon. He was a strange chap, a conscientious objector who was sent to prison for breaking a man’s jaw. The fellow had sneered at him as a ‘conshie’ and got beaten up in consequence. Some pacifist! When he visited Hew’s family, he was keen to sharpen the knives on the stone lintel of the house, but, as a black sheep in the family, was politely discouraged and sent on his way.
One of his plus points was that he wrote The Din of a Smithy, a fine evocation of the atmosphere there. In it, he recalls his first gate, adapted from one in the cathedral close in Exeter: ‘I felt mighty proud and happy when I saw it fixed and working smoothly… When I went back to the Smithy, there was a fat cheque in my pocket and shoeing had entirely lost its charm.’ He went on to create many gates.
The book also includes a photograph of Jars, as he was known from his initials. He was a huge man of 6ft 3in, with the looks and moustache of a cavalry officer. Only a silly man—especially one who had only one arm as this one did—would have taunted this mighty blacksmith. We have a pair of iron dogs he made, a useful curved poker and tongs.
We have so many knives because, when we had a house in Italy, there was a small town less than 10 miles away where they’d practised knife-making for five centuries. This was Scarperia, a splendid ancient walled town, which has the Palazzo dei Vicari with a 138ft tower, the whole built in 1306. Such castles are so common in Tuscany that it doesn’t get a single mention in the smart guidebooks. It’s twinned with the French knife-making town of Laguiole.
My knives are made by Giglio, which has a workshop and store just off the town’s main street. All are imprinted with the fleurde-lys (giglio in Italian) that’s the official badge of the Florentine region. All the knives are displayed under glass and I find it impossible not to visit and buy at least one knife each time.
Thus we have a couple of chef’s knives (which I don’t use a lot), a thin filleting knife, a turning knife for vegetables and several paring knives, which are the most useful of all. I also have two mezzalunas, one large and one small, which are perfect for chopping nuts. They’re due to be sharpened next time round.
The knife sharpener says that he can cope with most old-fashioned knives and those, like mine, of stainless steel, but, obviously, ceramic knives can’t be sharpened and nor can some modern metal ones.
My bible is Knife by Tim Hayward (Quadrille, £20), which compares the knives of China, Japan and the West, although I’m afraid Scarperia isn’t mentioned. However, Mr Hayward does say ‘Love your knife and it will love you back’. I can see many more trips to the knife sharpener in my future.
‘The book says love your knife and it will love you back