Switchblades of Italy , livre ebook

Turner Publishing Company - Neal Punchard , Dan Fuller , Tim Zinser

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135 pages

English

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This book starts the reader on a journey through time, with a short history of folding knives, leading to the evolution of the first switchblade. Progressing through time, wonderful photos illustrate the descriptions of switchblades. Throughout the book, highlighted sections showcase specific details that will be most helpful to collectors. Also included are facts about knifemakers styles, patterns, tang stamps, and a complete illustrated glossary. Contents Include: The first ever comprehensive publication about Italian switchblade knives, featuring knives and history from the late 1700s to the 1970s. Pictured within this hardbound book are nearly 200 beautiful photos and ephemera of the most unique and rarest Italian switchblades. Actual-size photos span more than two centuries of knifemaking history. Also pictured are catalog pages and advertisements, as well as historical photos. Extensive research has gone into this book to present never-before-published information which clears up and dispells many myths. Entire sections are dedicated to the most sought-after knifemaking companies, such as: Latama Coricama Mauro Mario Details about the knifemakers and businessmen involved behind the knives reveal who the major players shaping the switchblade industry and who made knives for other companies.

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Home

House

My Last Duchess

Italy

Power Tools

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Publié par	Turner Publishing Company
Date de parution	23 octobre 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781618585363
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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200 4th Avenue North, Suite 950
Nashville, TN 37219
445 Park Avenue, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10022
www.turnerpublishing.com
Copyright 2003 Neal Punchard, Tim Zinser, and Dan Fuller
Publishing Rights: Turner Publishing Company
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced without the written consent of the authors and the publisher.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2003113306
ISBN: 1-56311-933-1
Printed in the United States of America.
Limited Edition.
Authors Note: Knives are pictured at actual size.
Contents
I NTRODUCTION
B EFORE S WITCHBLADES : T HE F OLDING K NIFE
T HE E VOLUTION OF THE I TALIAN S WITCHBLADE
W HAT IS A P ICKLOCK A NYWAY ?
C LEARING U P S OME C LOUDY I NFORMATION
F ROSOLONE AND C AMPOBASSO
T HE L ATAMA S TORY
T HE K ING OR THE Q UEEN ?
M ORE L ATAMA M INUTIAE
T HE B LACK B EAUTY
T HE S INGULAR C ASE OF THE R ED -D OT S AFETY
C ORICAMA
E DWIN J AY
M AURO M ARIO
T HE A MUSING S HELL W RAP
EIG C UTLERY
E THAN 1953
O DDITIES ?
A N U RBAN L EGEND
T HE T ANG S TAMP M YSTIQUE
1958-1970
J NDIANA C UTLERY AND THE 1960 S
G LOSSARY
T HE A RT OF C OLLECTING
A PPENDIX
Introduction

Switchblade. The word conjures images from hundreds of movies: James Dean defending his honor at the planetarium; Glenn Ford disarming Vic Morrow in the classroom; Ernest Borgnine and Frank Sinatra facing off in a Honolulu alley. People who have never seen an automatic knife in person have been force-fed media images for fifty years. And those images have endowed the humble automatic knife with some fairly heavy social baggage, demonstrating the old Hollywood axiom that image is everything. Viewed from a pragmatic perspective, the chief historical function of the automatic knife has been that of a simple tool, useful when one needs a knife that is both small and can be opened with one hand. More mothers and grandmothers wielded switchblades in the last century than all the teenage gang bangers together. With the sock stretched over the darning egg, one hand held the work while the handy little Schrade could be opened one-handed to cut the thread. Or the stockman could hold an animal s lead and perform whatever task was at hand by flipping open his Case 6171. Not to be disingenuous, of course, the automatic knife was also identified as a favorite of teenage bad boys at least as early as 1950 ( The Toy that Kills, Ladies Home Companion, November 1950, p. 38ff). In any case, both descriptions probably lack something of the truth, especially by the 1950s.

Switchblade . The very word itself may bear some of the responsibility for the negative image that led to its being banned in 1958. And such a perfect word it is. Somehow it is hard to imagine press button, push button, automatic, or even spring knife engendering sufficient media and governmental attention to accomplish what the 1958 Switchblade Act accomplished. What a word, switchblade . And we don t even know where the word came from. It first appeared in the nineteenth century as a variant of knife switch, a device for closing an electrical circuit, but there is no evidence of any transfer from electricity to automatic knife. Most dictionaries, including those devoted to slang, suggest that the word first appeared about 1946, but provide no etymology or other information about its origin. The most intriguing source suggests that the first written use of the word can be found in Langston Hughes poem The Negro Mother. This is an appealing detail in that much slang has always derived from one subculture or another, and African-American culture has probably been the richest source. The problem is that no available copy of the poem contains the word. This does not mean that Hughes did not use the term, perhaps in an earlier draft, but it creates a dead end to that particular search.
Despite the mystery surrounding the origin of the word, there is one aspect that is nearly universal. Ask anyone, whether a person who has only seen switchblades in the movies or an advanced collector, to close his eyes and visualize a switchblade and almost without exception he will think of an Italian stiletto. Considering that both the term and the knife arrived in this country almost simultaneously in the years after World War II, it is perhaps not surprising that the two are essentially synonymous. Of course, there are switchblades that are not Italian stilettos, and there are Italian stilettos that are not switchblades, but to the mainstream culture of the modern world they amount to the same thing.

So it is not surprising that the hottest area of switchblade collecting and the richest area for historical study is the Italian stiletto-not that much background is known. As with the word itself, much of the history of the Italian switchblade is rather murky, but a good bit of painstaking research has provided some of the answers. Before we dive into that discussion, however, several things need to be observed. First, these Italian switchblades have more in common with baseball cards and comic books than with fine Renaissance daggers or even Randall knives. Even Latama, the purveyor of perhaps the finest quality knives, advertised switchblades as novelties . And even the Italian craftsmen who made the knives didn t take them seriously. The blades were seldom hardened-meaning that they would not hold an edge-nor were they intended to be working knives or used for anything-except perhaps stabbing. Perhaps part of the enduring charm of the Italian stilettos is their essential uselessness. In truth, their only real virtues are that they look neat and that there is something quintessentially cool about a knife that opens by pushing a button. While there are a few instances of an Italian switchblade being used in a fight-and those instances are very few, despite what unsubstantiated media reports say-it would not be a serious knife fighter s choice of weapon. Any decent fixed-blade military or hunting knife would be a much better choice. But the psychological effect, a slim blade whipping out with a sinister snick, the characteristic that Hollywood has exploited in over 400 films,that is an advantage that belongs to the switchblade alone.
In the pages that follow, you will see appealing blades, unique knives, beautiful handles, and intricate mechanisms. As with so many collectibles, however, most of these characteristics were incidental to their original manufacture. Collectors wax poetically over the beauty of the horn scales. Enthusiasts talk at length about minor variations in button attachment and placement, about minor variations in mechanism, about differences between steel and brass liners, about short versus long bolsters, about slight differences in blade grinds. Little of this was of importance to the knifemakers themselves except as it made their task easier, speeded up the process, or represented an improvement in function. Which is not to say that the cutlers did nor take pride in their work. In fact, it is the fact that they did take such pride that accounts for much of the knives appeal today. But these old cutlers were also realists and never thought that they were laboring in the golden age of switchblades or turning out objets d arts for the ages.
Before Switchblades: The Folding Knife

This knife is the oldest known Italian switchblade, circa late 1700s-1800. It is marked Prioletta, the name of an old Italian cutlery family. The knife measures 13 long and features horn handles. The release button and rocking arm are all exposed. The picklock blade release is similar to those of the 1950s.
A stick for digging termites may have been early man s first tool, but his first tool of significance was the knife. In fact, the knife remains as important today as it ever was, and it could be argued that it was a more important technological advance than even the wheel. Without a knife in some form, grain could not have been harvested, meat could not have been butchered, enemies could not have been dispatched. Do you believe your computer to be indispensable? Consider your knife. You couldn t eat, dress, or shave without the knife in one of its myriad forms. From childbirth to the guillotine, some sharp-edged cutting tool is part of the absolute, visceral fabric of our lives.
Considering the importance of knives in the development of human civilization, it is little wonder that the history and development of cutlery is an impossibly broad subject for any one study, but before we focus on automatic knives, some background information may prove useful. From the earliest flint scraper or obsidian blade, there was a steady-but slow-progression in the technology of cutlery from the first metal knives of bronze through the iron age up to the development of steel. Before there could be automatic knives, though, there had to be folding knives. For whatever reason-convenience or concealment one must assume- some enterprising knifemaker living in the Roman Empire created the folding knife. These first folders lacked a backspring and were held in position, open or closed, solely by friction. Early metal springs were used on the first wheelock rifles in the middle of the sixteenth century and were rather too large and crude-looking to have had much attraction for knifemakers. Today, the term spring knife may conjure up an image of a modern automatic, but the term originally referred to the first folding knives to be constructed with a back spring, which helped hold a knife open or closed and was invented sometime around the middle of the eighteenth century. What seems to have made possible this revolutionary step in the history of the folding knife was the invention of a much improved and much smaller spring by the clockmaker Benjamin Huntsman, in 1742.

This modification marked a significant advance in the utility of the folding knife, and the fascination and experimentation with springs that must have