PARING KNIFE - LARGE - NONTRON
Large paring knife, handy and precise, 12cm T5MOS stainless steel blade, 10cm round handle in hand-pyrographed boxwood.
The revival of the oldest French knife, the legendary knife marked with the 3-point V, a mysterious symbol whose origin no one knows anymore..!
An all-purpose tool, an essential attribute of peasants, a companion for every meal, the Nontron has stood the test of time since the 15th century.
Hand-crafted, each knife is entirely made by the same artisan. Handle in local boxwood from the Périgord Vert, cut after twenty years, air-dried for four years
Each piece is unique. The artisan company currently employs about twenty cutlers and holds the Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant label.
La Coutellerie Nontronnaise, heir to an immemorial expertise, is a staple of the French regional knife landscape. A Nontron represents our territory and our skills.
The Nontron knife is considered an ancestor and inspires many legends. This imagery, dating back to the dawn of time, relies as much on its imaginative shapes as on its distinctive pyrographic mark.
Its history is so long that it is difficult to date its birth. However, experts agree that the Nontron knife is the oldest knife in France and that its origin dates back at least to the 15th century.
Writings and excavations indicate that long before the Middle Ages, forging was common in this French region. Guillaume de la Villeneuve alluded to the "knives of Périgord" at the beginning of the 13th century.
Subsequently, blacksmiths were praised for their skills in poems and songs. Some historians claim that King Charles VII (1403-1461), called "the Victorious" by Joan of Arc, had his sword made in Nontron.
In the 18th century, Nontron had thirty-five cutlers. By 1928, only one company remained: La Coutellerie Nontronnaise. On June 21, 2000, a new workshop designed by Luc-Arsène Henry opened its doors.
La Coutellerie Nontronnaise remains the only one to perpetuate this centuries-old tradition. Each piece, made from start to finish by the same cutler, is unique. From the boxwood branch (dried on-site for at least 4 years) to the finished knife, it takes 40 manufacturing steps: the main ones being sawing, grooving the blank, fitting the iron ferrule and nail, installing the rotating brass or nickel silver ferrule, applying the stamp, grinding the back, sanding and then polishing the handle, and sharpening the forged blade (since 1992, all blades have been produced by Forge de Laguiole).
One operation remains: pyrography. These patterns, whose origin and meaning are still unknown, consist of 6 "flies": a sort of inverted V framed by 3 dots and 4 rows of small dots.
Defending and buying a Nontron means taking part in a process that rejects the loss of skills and contributing to the demonstration that a product made entirely by hand in France can still exist.