The BLADE Blogs

A CITES meeting that could determine whether there will be a world ivory ban begins Sept. 24 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The 17th annual meeting of the CITES Conference of Parties is set to run through Oct. 5 and will include individuals and organizations around the globe who are for or against a world ivory ban, as well as a ban on ancient and other ivories. CITES stands for “Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora,” and is “an international agreement among governments … to ensure international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.”

Elephant Protection Association officials indicate they expect animal rights groups to push for terminating “sustainable use” as a means of conserving any listed or endangered wildlife, which includes elephants and the trade of ivory. For U.S. owners of legal elephant ivory, this could at the very least mean losing the narrow “De Minimis Exception” in the recent Federal Domestic Ivory Ban instituted in July. Though it allows an extremely low amount of per-person trade in elephant ivory, the De Minimis Exception does allow some of it.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) fighting for a worldwide elephant ivory ban want CITES to list all African elephants on Appendix I. If the NGOs are successful, it will lead to even more pressure on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to list all elephants as endangered, too. According to the Elephant Protection Association, the FWS has indicated that if CITES puts elephants on the endangered list, FWS would abolish the De Minimis Exception. But that’s not all.

The Elephant Protection Association’s Rob Mitchell reports that the petition to declare elephants endangered is already under review. “I don’t know low long before they will reach a final determination, but it won’t surprise me one bit if they try to time it to coincide with [the Sept. 24-Oct. 5 meeting],” he notes. In fact, “FWS could make the determination even if CITES does not list all elephants on Appendix I.”

For more information, stay tuned to www.elephantprotection.org. (Editor’s note: The Elephant Protection Association is building a new website. You also can stay updated on elephant ivory news by watching videos from The Conservation Imperative on the Association’s Facebook page.)

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President Theodore Roosevelt’s knife, passed down through the Roosevelt family for the past 107 years and never before available for sale to the public, will be put to auction Sept. 9-11 by Rock Island Auction Co.

Made by J. Russell & Co. of Green River, New York, the Roosevelt knife features handle work by Dreicer & Co. (1904-1923), the latter a leading jewelry retailer of the time and a competitor of such top companies as Faberge. Said to have originally cost $1,250—$33,216 in 2016 dollars—the Roosevelt knife is predicted by Rock Island Auction Co. to bring between $150,000 and $300,000 at auction.

According to public documents, James W. Gerard of the “supreme bench of New York City” and later ambassador to Germany, presented the knife to Roosevelt on March 3, 1909—Roosevelt’s last full day as president. It was a gift Gerard intended for Roosevelt to use on an upcoming African hunting trip. A March 10 story in the local Rock Island newspaper carried the headline “Fine Knife For Roosevelt.” It described Gerard as a close friend of Roosevelt and the knife as a “masterpiece of jeweler’s workmanship, the hilt being wrought in gold and platinum and ornamented with jewels. The [pommel] is carved in the shape of an eagle’s head of solid gold. The eagle’s eyes are garnets.

“On one side of the hilt beneath the eagle’s head is depicted a forest scene, with two [men] behind a birch tree, one of them standing, rifle in hand, the other crouching. The tree is done in gold upon a platinum background. On the reverse side is set the arms of the United States, surmounting a wishbone and intertwining tree boughs in gold. Below is the monogram ‘T.R.’ The background on this side is also of platinum. Two bears’ heads extending out from the handle form the guard at the base of the blade,” which is engraved “Presented to Theodore Roosevelt by His Friend, James W. Gerard.”

For more on the auction of the Roosevelt knife, contact Rock Island Auction Co. at www.rockislandauction.com.

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Custom knifemakers seem to introduce most knife innovations, which are then emulated by factory knife companies. Not so with custom pocket clips. BLADE Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame© member Sal Glesser popularized knives with pocket clips in his Spyderco production line, and custom knifemakers took their cue from him. As a result, today’s custom pocket clips might well be called “Sal’s Pals.”

Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, Spyderco offered its first knife with a pocket clip—and also the company’s trademarked blade opening hole—in 1981 when it introduced the Worker model. Spyderco also popularized serrations on sporting folding knives.

The fact that custom knifemakers adopted the pocket clip, as did factory knife companies everywhere, should come as no surprise. For one thing, the clip’s abilities to attach a closed folding knife to the lip of your pocket rather than having the knife bang around in the bottom of it with car keys, coins, etc., and to make it much easier to retrieve are eminently practical. In addition, Spyderco has offered many factory/custom collaborations—knives designed by custom knifemakers and then reproduced by a company, in this case Spyderco. The first of these was in the early 1990s—the C15 designed by Bob Terzuola, which, of course, also had the blade hole and a pocket clip.

Today’s custom versions of the pocket clip run the gamut, including long ones, short ones, tall ones, round, anodized ones, rose gold ones and more.

For instance, Michael Zieba won Best New Maker at the 2016 BLADE Show for his S2 standard and mini models with serpentine titanium pocket clips finished in rose gold.

On the other end of the scale is Lucas Burnley’s Asian-style folder with a very short skeletonized clip, while Butch Ball offers trailing-point damascus clips on his pearl-handle folders. Craig Camerer presents a long, curved clip in mokuti on his damascus folding knife, while Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame member Ken Onion opts for a short, cross-hatched clip on one style of his folders.

These are but a few of today’s custom knifemakers who took their cue from Sal Glesser and his utilitarian pocket clip. Hey, if you’re going to emulate someone, emulate the best.

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