Chapter 127
Today I am for some reason currently lost amid my muddied memories of recent past, pulling open drawers to check my steel implements for hallmarks. Sheffield Steel. Something I grew up with, a mark of quality and usefulness, durability and a craft. Here in my drawer, amid a dozen or so anodyne modern knives I no longer use, one of my treasured possessions; a smooth-bladed knife that must be approaching 100 years old, it may once have been a butter knife, but this one, or one identical to it that may be elsewhere in the family, sustained the grandfather I never knew through a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
Before I ever knew, or consciously knew its story, I was drawn to this knife. It is perfectly balanced ‘twixt haft and blade, giving an effortless heft to its use. This simple engineering of physics and chemistry in its creation results in a thing of beauty. The handle, yellowed and cracked with age into an almost microscopic mosaic explosion, puckers its antique lips in tiny creases at the top end where it meets the steel in an immovable kiss.
The curlicue of mystery at the base of the blade is a never-ending story for me, exposing the lamination of hand- wrought steel that forms its innards, folded and pressed and stressed, much as (and entirely unlike) butter is layered through puff pastry. Is this the result of years of honing against wetstones, refining an edge for all manner of purposes? I see my faceless grandfather sitting in a stone cell with dripping walls. I see the sunken cheeks and gaunt hopeless expression of those photographs of internment survivors. I see much…
Like the sun-drenched kitchen of my childhood as that smooth, clean blade sweeps slowly across the counter-top, shaving curling queries of hardening doughintothepalmofmyhand,orslides deepintothecentreofascone,emerging unscathed, a heated blade. Watching the butter slip and slide from its hot surface aftersplittingafreshly-bakedsconestill steaming from the oven.
That knife, or one like it… circling in magic elixirs as my father mixes fibreglass putty in my favourite breakfast bowl. A thick melamine bowl with shelf-like lips at either side, sunshine yellow on the outside, creamy white within, oh I loved eating from that bowl… when I was about 5 or 6 years old.
Note: on re-reading it does sound as though my esteemed parent was about to feed his devoted daughter fibreglass putty. Rest assured, although we had several dubious adventures together, he never resorted to this.
I loved helping my Dad fix the cars – cleaning and replacing spark plugs, patching and repairing bodywork, taking the weekend with him at the mill site where there were proper mechanics’ bays with pits in which he’d work beneath the car. I found that wildly exciting as I hovered about the edges passing various implements on demand and being terribly useful. I’ve known the difference between a socket wrench and a monkey wrench from an early age. The other men probably thought it was hysterical, I must have been at least thigh-high by then.
The bowl never recovered, but the knives are almost indestructible.
To create a work of utilitarian art such as this, that will survive world wars, incarceration, evacuation, emigration and who knows what? To create something that will be useful, constructive, helpful, for generation after generation. To create something and to stencil, by hand, in quavering, now nigh-invisible letters Sheffield Stainless and to leave it at that?
THANK YOU to the myriad unnamed, unsung heroes who build the things we need and continue to provide for their families and those of others. THANK YOU to the craftsmen who produce such things, to the TEACHERS who enable us to learn and adapt new skills and knowledge, to the DOCTORS, NURSES, SUPPORT TEAMS who in our disparate societies of boxes and fences, help to keep families together, alive and thriving, to the GRATEFUL souls who know that they are blessed and in so doing, continue to bless us all with their continuing positive contributions to our world.
With gratitude and love,
Kat Dancer
bodymudra@gmail.com
403.931.3866 (h), 415.525.2630 (c)
Disclaimer: The author denies any responsibility for the accuracy of wildly varied, one-sided childhood memories!
