Beyond the Article
This column appeared in the September 2009 issue of BLADE. Click here to see what else is in that edition.

This issue’s story on San Francisco knives and related designs includes comments by Phil Lobred, coordinator of the upcoming Art Knife Invitational in San Diego Oct. 24 and a seasoned collector of custom and San Francisco knives—all of which resurrected the story of how he got into collecting the classic dress bowies in the first place.

Phil long had coveted the knives Michael Price and Will & Finck made in the mid-19th century, but was unable to obtain any because most were in old collections and generally not for sale.

Feeding Phil’s desire was The Antique Bowie Knife Book by Blade Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Famers© Bill Adams and Bruce Voyles, and Terry Moss, published in 1990. It contains photographs of antique bowies from some of the world’s greatest collections, including those of Robert Berryman and Charles Schreiner III. Among the photos are those of some vintage San Francisco knives.

In February 1992, Ted Dowell, a good friend of Phil’s and an accomplished maker of San Francisco knife reproductions in his own right, called with good news. Ted said he was in the kitchen making sandwiches and a friend of his was in the living room looking through Cutlery Hall-
Of-Famer Bernard Levine’s Knifemakers of Old San Francisco when Ted thought he heard his friend say, “I’ve got a knife that looks like this,” followed by, “Oh, I’ve got a knife that looks like this, too!”

As it turns out, the knives of Ted’s friend were made by Price and Will & Finck—as Phil observed, the Nos. 1 and 2 most important makers of 1850s San Francisco knives. “I believe [Ted’s friend] said his mother and stepfather bought them in an antique store in Seattle on their way to Alaska in the 1940s,” Phil recalled.

The friend sent Ted the knives and told him he wanted him to sell them to a good collector. “Ted called me and I called [his friend] and bought them,” Phil remembered.

Rather than ship the knives, Ted would deliver them to Phil at the upcoming Solvang Custom Knife Show.

“Just before the Solvang Show, in March of ’92, Butterfield and Butterfield of San Francisco held a now famous auction of bowie knives [see “Million Dollar Bowie Auction”, August 1992 BLADE®], the collections of Robert Berryman and Charles Schreiner III,” Phil explained. “This auction, spurred on by The Antique Bowie Knife Book, blew the top off the prices for fine, well-documented antique bowie and San Francisco knives.”

Two weeks later, Dowell delivered the knives to Phil. “They were amazing,” Phil said. “The Will & Finck is arguably the fanciest known. [The Michael Price] is in perfect condition and of the four or five Price ring daggers known, this one is the best, in my opinion. It’s also one of only two or three San Francisco knives to have a California bear scrimshawed on it.”

Later, Phil called William R. Williamson, noted antique bowie authority and Cutlery Hall Of Famer, and asked him to examine the knives. “He said I should prepare myself for probable fakes because
it would be so rare to find two unknown knives of this magnitude at the same time. He completely deflated me,” Phil admitted. “I was sick until he arrived about noon the next day. When he saw the two knives, he was stunned.”

The story is testimony to Phil’s awareness as a collector, the influence of such outstanding collector books as The Antique Bowie Knife Book and Knifemakers of Old San Francisco, friends who know
knives and know that you do, too—and good, old-fashioned good luck. Who knows? Keep your blade antenna up and you may be next to find the knife of a lifetime.