If you missed this year’s Adelaide knife show then you missed a very convivial event! The show came and went without drama or mishap, there was no negative publicity there was no fighting or fainting, even the weather was good! In fact the media’s response (because there always is one) was so quiet that I needed to check each day leading up to the show that the knife show ‘ads’ were in the local papers! I was a little nervous that no one was going to come along to this year’s show but how wrong I was. At 9am on the Saturday morning the crowd of waiting knife enthusiasts was unleashed and within about half an hour the venue was full and buzzing with an air of excitement that I haven’t seen for some time. It is right around this time of the morning that we announce the winners of the knife awards (it takes a while to tally the votes and decipher the calligraphy of knife makers). The award presentation obviously captures the attention of everyone present and provides due public recognition to the knifemakers deemed best by their peers in the various categories.
The winners of the awards were -
Maurie McCarthy has been the winner of the ‘Art Knife’ award for many years and this year was no exception. Maurie, when he accepted the award, announced that he turned 70 this year and as such was ‘retiring’ from entering knife award competitions!
Another senior member of the knife making fraternity was present at the show, Ross Yeats from Western Australia. Ross turned 80 this year and made the journey to SA just because he wanted to! Ross makes a fine knife and is an obviously highly skilled artisan and frankly an inspiration for the ‘younger’ members within the Guild. And talking about younger members I finally had an opportunity to see Alistair Phillips’ multi-blade slip joint folders close up, Wow! As a folder maker myself I appreciate the work that goes into these little marvels and even though Alistair is new at the game he is doing a remarkable job. Have a look if you get the chance, you will be impressed.
Saturday was a really busy day, we had 360 paying people through the door (there are quite a lot of ‘complimentary’ admissions) and knife sales looked very good.
Sunday morning this year was the busiest I can remember. Usually Sunday morning is an opportunity to catch up with other knife makers, check out their work and recover from the night before! This year that was not to be, we had a very steady crowd come through and although not as busy as Saturday, it was not far behind.
Karim Haddad came over to Adelaide this year to show Guild members what has happened with the Guild web site and to give makers a ‘heads up’ on what they will be able to do in the near future with managing their own content within the Guild site. It all looks very impressive and is quite exciting in terms of what individuals will be able to do. I expect that there will be more information in the newsletter about this development.
In total for the weekend we had about 520 through the door and 81 custom made knives sold plus a significant number of pre-owned and factory knives. Another very enjoyable and satisfactory event, thanks to all who participated and helped to make it a successful show.
Knife makers in attendance at the 2010 Adelaide Knife Show