About Me
I was born in Thabazimbi, in the Northern Province of South Africa, in 1952. I qualified as a medical doctor at Pretoria University and am still in part time practice.
I ground my first knife, a dagger, in 1979 from a fully hardened file on a back yard bench grinder and shaped the handle on an electric hand drill. After completing a few of these as presents to my friends, I decided my other hobbies like model ship building and fishing were much more fun.
I met Kevin Harvey at Gold Reef City in 1999 and completed my first knife making course there. Subsequent courses with Andrè Thorburn and numerous visits to other knife makers shaped me in the art of knife making. During this time I also attended a jewellery making and gold smithing course.
In 2002 I became a member of the Knife Makers Guild of Southern Africa.
My true passion is to create elegant art and gentleman’s folders and knives. Most of them feature a variety of inlay materials like stone, meteorite and other exotic materials.
I am now only making once off, never to be repeated unique knives and the folders all have an IKBS bearing system.
All my knives are presented and sold in boxes made from indigenous hard woods. These boxes are made by the master craftsman Brian Coetzee. A signed and dated certificate plaque of the features of the knife is placed in the lid of the box.
Marianna, my lovely wife, a knowledgeable and stern critic of my work, inspects every knife in detail before it leaves the workshop. She also makes the inside cradles for the knives in the boxes and fits the plaques in the lids.
My Logo
In 1997 I went on a Nile cruise from Aswan to Cairo, stopping at all the important archaeological sites. The resident jeweller on the boat offered to make me a ‘cartouche’ with my name in hieroglyphs in it. He explained the meaning of a cartouche to me as follows:
A cartouche is an oval ring that is a hieroglyph representation of a rope folded and tied at one end. It symbolized everything that the sun encircled and is thus an indication of the king’s rule of the cosmos. Since the Fourth Dynasty, all the Pharos in ancient Egypt encircled their names in their own personalized cartouches.
About two years later I lost my cartouche.
Shortly after that, while doing a jewellery making course; I had to do a home gold soldering project. I decided to make my own cartouche which came out looking just like the one I lost.
This was when I decided to use my cartouche as my knife making logo.