Workers of Art
A mix of Egyptian bling, high-tech function and blue-collar pricing!
In the old days—say, 10 years ago—you had your choice of working knives or art knives. Working knives were plain, functional, and inexpensive. Art knives were exotic, beautiful, and expensive…and you’d never use one for actual work. That’s not true anymore. Back in the old days, high-end CNC machining and quality materials were expensive, too. That’s not true anymore, either, and it’s one of the reasons that very well-made, high-quality, inexpensive working knives with good steels are now available with looks and visual appeal that’ll knock your socks off. Today, if you want a working knife with bling, the cool factor, or sex appeal, you have a wide choice. And probably no company leads in this segment of the market like Columbia River Knife & Tool.
The other main reason that that knife you’d expect to pay many hundreds of dollars for a decade ago (and in 10-year-old dollars) is now available for less than $100, is the explosion of creativity within the ranks of the custom knife makers who design these working art pieces. Not just any custom maker can succeed in these collaborations, though. In addition to creating practical designs with high visual appeal, they have to be willing to tweak the design and its look so that it’s manufacturable; they have to be able to work with the manufacturer’s engineering staff productively (most knife makers, by contrast, tend to be lone rangers), and they have to know enough about manufacturing to do all of this intelligently. One of the few custom makers who is able to do this repeatedly is Allen Elishewitz. His partnership with CRKT over the years has produced many exciting high-function, high-appeal, and high-value knives.
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