One of the thing not described in most descriptions of the Blade Show are the interactions with artists.  Yes, artists.

I was so busy looking at knives I didn’t recognize Sandra Brady selecting beautiful warthog ivory-handled knives from Arno Bernard. https://arnobernard.com/

Arno Bernard lives in South Africa and makes amazing knives.  These will become Sandra’s canvas.  Sandra Brady is a fantastic scrimshaw artist.  I have, or rather my wife has, one of her pieces and it is stunning.  https://sandrabradyart.com.

I asked her if the Bernard knives were part of a project, and she said no, she wanted them for future commissions.  Her display held a wide subject range of scrimshaw art.

“What’s your favorite subject to work on?”

After a moment, she told me, “I like doing eagles and hawks, but I love a challenge.”

I love my unadorned Arno Bernard. I saw Frank Karl, author of this blog and a Knife Magazine writer, at Blade, but it was a briefer than usual interaction.