Knife Notes – Chris Hyde

Visitors to Solingen would be well advised to take a couple of hours and visit the Rheinisches Industrie Museum. It is easy to get to via public transportation. Visiting this museum is like traveling trip back to the Turn of The Century. You can see and experience what a knife and scissor manufacturing company would have looked like at that time.

The Rheinisches Industriemuseum is an example of historic preservation at it’s best. The main museum is an interactive working forge. Founded in 1886, the Hendrichs drop forge was a vital part of the Solingen cutlery industry. In the 1980s Dr. Jochem Putsch organized a group to purchase the declining business in order to preserve it as a “living” museum.

In addition to the Hendrichs drop forge facility there are several satellite sites in and around Solingen. The Wipper Kotten for example is on the Wipper river and is a renovated water powered grinding mill from the 17th century.

After posting the “stubby” knife in yesterdays offering I remembered a photograph that was in a short book about the Rheinisches Industrie Museum in Solingen, Germany. Here it is:

This knife tells us so much about the owner and the state of the German economy at this time (probably the 1920s or early 1930s). The economy in Germany began to get progressively worse in the mid to late 1920s until in 1930 there was a significant economic collapse. When it is hard to afford basic commodities a new pocket knife was an expense many people could not suffer.

More soon. Thanks for looking!

Chris Hyde

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