L’homme et son couteau, Marc Prival, Roger Rouquier (book)

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L’homme et son couteau (book) by Marc Prival, Roger Rouquier. Hard cover. 2001. Good condition. There is a dedication on the title page. 240 pages. Editor Create. In French.

This book talks about the man and the knife: the one who makes it, but especially the one who uses it, as a tool most of the time, but also as a collector’s item, a rallying sign, a pretext for dreams.

Two authors and two complementary approaches. One geographer and ethnologist, a specialist in techniques, has studied the different stages of design, execution, marketing and the defense of brands. The other, amateur and historian of the knife, draws with great attention to detail everything that passes through his hands and investigates their origin.

From a collaboration of nearly twenty years, made up of confident and fruitful exchanges, a mass of information was born that had to be organised. Five years were needed to do it. This shows the magnitude of the task accomplished, but we also note its interest. The knives in question here, in their great majority, have hardly more than a century of existence. It is therefore not a historical study, but an essay with rich anthropological material.

What does a knife say when it enters a museum or private collection, on the death of its owner? Few things in reality. But the pocket knife in particular (or belt knife, bag etc.) is an intimate object. Carried as close as possible to himself, his owner likes to take him out at any opportunity to eat (this is the most common case), to prune a branch, to clean his pipe, to help out (and there are hundreds of possible situations), including cutting the lines of a parachute. Users talk about the daily use of their tool by the pen of the authors.

Professional or leisure knives, traditional or renewed regional knives, identity marker knives, the subject is vast and fascinating and should interest an audience that goes beyond simple knife wearers or collectors.

Feel free to check out the additional photos at the top left, thank you!

If you prefer to pay in euros, =before= you start ordering, you must click on the word “Français” in orange, under the main photo above, which will redirect you to the same description in French and payment in Euros.