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Murad Sayen
By the time I was eight years old, I already had scars on my hands
from knife cuts, mostly from mishandling my various pocket-knives.
I also spent much of my unaccountable time the hours during which
my parents neither knew nor seemed to care what I was doing making
things. I made, for instance, an extensive collection of small replicas
of WWII infantry weapons, carved from balsa, painted and even made
to appear metallic by rubbing their ‘steel’ surfaces
with graphite.
In my teens, and later, I often gave factory knives to friends
and relatives as gifts. It is accurate to say that knives have been
an integral part of my life since my earliest memories. Therefore,
when I was casting about for a craft to both learn and to teach
my charges as a ‘detached’ youth worker for the city
of Ithaca NY, in 1977, it was not surprising that knives came to
mind. Actually, they were presented front and center by some coinciding
events: I broke a Buck Frontiersman on a camping trip, trying to
cut down a two inch sapling, and one of my kids came in to the Youth
Bureau with a skinner that he’d made from a file, by forging
it with a hammer and oxy-acetylene torch. Then I found Sid Latham’s
book on contemporary handmade knives, and I went to my boss, Sam
Cohen and said, Sam, I want to set-up a knife shop in the building.
The look on his face was one I will never forget. He said, simply,
Tell me more. He knew there must be a powerful rational argument
behind such a request. And, indeed, there was. Eleven ‘student’
knifemakers ended up going to work for Therm Inc., a maker of prototype
and one-of-a-kind turbine blade sets.
When my Ceta title VI grant expired after four years, I struck
out on my own as a journeyman knifemaker, and met Don Fogg shortly
before leaving the Youth Bureau. The timing was propitious, and
he gave me my first glimpse of Damascus steel. We immediately realized
that our interests were complimentary: he loved making the steel,
working with for forge, and I could never wait to finish the blade
to start the handle. In 1980 we made our first collaborative piece,
and named our partnership Kemal, which is an Arabic term for Balance
or Perfection, referring to the complimentary creative and receptive
energies of the sun and the moon.
Over the next few years, we worked to both develop a synergetic
combination of our relative talents, and to make a partnership that
could withstand two strong-willed personalities, both of them pushing
the limits of their abilities and imaginations. It was hard at times,
and it was marvelous. Don remains a close friend, and is my son’s
Godfather. Sam was born in Don’s livingroom, on Don’s
birthday, in fact.
As my knifemaking efforts soared into the realm of the imagination,
no longer being bound by the constraints of being solely ‘using’
knives, I began to plumb themes that have always been of great interest
to me. These include such areas as mythos, nature, storytelling,
and fantasy. I have been asked countless times what really constitutes
an ‘art knife’, and my answer is always the same: A
knife which transcends its own knife hood, so to speak, and becomes
something more. What this means, to me, is that when such elements
as symbolism and the imaginary are employed, the piece becomes an
expression far beyond simply that of a bladed instrument. Yes, it
needs to retain its realness as a knife. It must be durable, sharp,
ergonomic and eminently useable, able, in fact, to accomplish its
assigned task superbly, but it also must go beyond, into the world
of iconography, of the evocation of feelings, thoughts and elements
far grander and deeper than simply being a knife.
Last year, I came back to knifemaking for the third time. I had
taken time to write and photograph, publish two books a novel and
a photography book on Maine and my return after eight years of absence
has filled me with a feeling of renewal, of excitement that there
are places I haven’t yet visited with this art form, and I
have also found that what used to be somewhat of a struggle has
mysteriously gotten easier in the interim. For instance, at this
point of my life I am now fifty-eight I find a facility with drawing
and visualizing designs that used to be like pulling teeth. They
seem to flow from my mind onto the design sheet, as if beckoned
forth by an incantation. True.
It is common knowledge that artists enter a period of mastery if
they have paid their dues as long-term journeymen. I just didn’t
expect that such an evolution could happen, even while I was pursuing
other media, albeit still using my creative faculties.
Lately, I have discovered that if I pay attention to my thought-stream
when I first awaken, in the pre-dawn, that there is a wealth of
ideas, both conceptual and visual, which are flowing through my
consciousness. Now, I actually make notes and refer to them later
in the morning, when I am fully awake. I also often receive important
and useful information about other aspects of my life at that early
hour, and pay attention to this guidance as well.
The pieces I want to do now seem to have some elements in common,
although they are still quite diverse in other ways. I want them
to incorporate materials which have an energy all their own. An
example of this is petrified dinosaur bone. The first piece that
I saw, and held in my hand, fascinated me. It was agatized, to be
sure, no longer actually bone, but it was a clear map of the actual
cells that had grown in a dinosaur’s skeleton, and wandered
the Earth over 140 million years ago. It was also very beautiful.
To then cut, shape and polish a piece of this amazing material and
integrate it into the Hu Doo Dagger was, for me, very pleasing,
even exciting. It adds an element of mystery carried from the mists
of antiquity to the present. It is hard to explain the feeling it
gives me to handle and look at such a material. Words like vibration,
energy and presence come to mind.
I am very fond of knife designs that flow. To me a design well
executed has a dynamic quality that is an expression of the energy
of both beauty and practicality. Holding a well-done fighting knife
transmits both its lethality and its elegance at once. I like that.
When I am working on a piece, I often will sit with it in the evening
just feeling how it relates to my hand and how it becomes an extension
of both my body and my will. A good fighter, like any fine weapon,
is almost magical in its ability to accomplish the will of its bearer.
This is the stuff of legends, but that legendary aspect is not built
on mere imagination and myth. I would never be so brash as to claim
that what I have made is of this level, but certainly that is my
intention and wish, that it should become so.
Later, on these pages, I will attempt to explain why the rush to
folding knives is so antithetical to the preservation of our historical
craft and art-form. Simply making a knife with a hinge in the middle,
in order that it be conveniently stowed on one’s person, prevents
the foremost retention of considerations of ergonomics, balance
and effectiveness in actual use. The hinged knife has become an
object of fascination because it introduces the world of high-precision
craftsmanship, ingenuity of concept and execution not because it
makes any knife easier or better to use. One can argue at length
the merits of the modern hand-made folder, but you will never succeed
in justifying the hinged aspect from a using (not a carrying) perspective.
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The Hu Doo Dagger:
In truth,I haven’t the slightest idea what a Hu Doo is. A
friend told me that there are rock formations in the upper mid-west
called Hoodoos, but that is as close as I can come to a real world
reference. I made up the term, complete with my own preference for
spelling, because it seems to fit the mythical beasts that are perched
atop the quillions of this dagger. They are also figments of my
imagination, and not drawn from any visual or historical references.
But, I am interested in what they project, both energetically, and
psychologically. I did not intend for them to be only menacing,
but rather for them to have a sense of whimsy, and yet still retain
an underlying quality that inspires a feeling of mild uneasiness.
There is that shadow theme again.
I made a focused effort to find materials for this piece which
had a feeling of timelessness. The red stone in the pommel is agatized
dinosaur bone, from Utah. Along with the fossil walrus haft and
the black star sapphire eyes of the creatures, the overall intent
is to evoke the beauty of nature and its continuity throughout the
eons. The dinosaur bone clearly shows the actual cell-structures
that walked across the land over 140 million years ago. The walrus
ivory has been buried for an indeterminate period, its bearer died
possibly as long ago as the last ice age. The steel of the fittings
is composed mostly of the primary earth element: iron. That is about
as elemental as one can get.
I tried to incorporate as many complimentary (or conflicting,
depending on one’s perspective) aspects as possible into this
piece. It is a large and lethal weapon, but is also beautiful and
graceful. People hardly know what to react to first or foremost
when confronted with its presence for the first time. One is both
attracted and threatened by it, and therein lies its appeal for
me. It is not clear in the above photographs, but the eyes of the
Hu Doos are almost hypnotic in their appearance. I sought out black
star sapphires all the way from Thailand, hoping that would be the
result.
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