BREAD KNIFE - PYROGRAPHED BOXWOOD - NONTRON
Bread knife, 20cm Z40C13 stainless steel blade, mirror finish, 10cm handle in hand-pyrographed boxwood.
Delivered with a gift box.
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 crossed the ages since the 15th century.
Handcrafted, 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 artisanal company currently has about twenty cutlers and is labeled as a Living Heritage Company.
La Coutellerie Nontronnaise, heir to an immemorial expertise, is a staple of the French regional knife landscape. A Nontron represents our territory and our craftsmanship.
The Nontron knife is considered an ancestor and inspires numerous legends. This imagery, dating back to the dawn of time, relies as much on its unique shapes as on its distinctive pyrography 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 origins date 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, the 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 age-old tradition. Each piece, crafted from start to finish by the same cutler, is unique. From the boxwood branch (dried for a minimum of 4 years on-site) to the finished knife, it takes 40 manufacturing steps: the main ones being sawing, grooving the blank, fitting the iron ferrule and the nail, attaching the rotating brass or nickel-silver ferrule, stamping the mark, 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 then remains: the pyrography. These motifs, whose origin and meaning are still unknown, consist of 6 "flies": a type of inverted V framed by 3 dots and 4 rows of small dots.
To support and buy a Nontron is to participate in a process that rejects the loss of skills and to help demonstrate that a product made entirely by hand in France can still exist.