A Quaker Way of Knife Making

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Addendum: Henry Freeman is a member of Clear Creek Friends Meeting

Transcript:

As I started making knives, a real transformational moment was when I looked over in a corner and I had my dad’s old walking stick that I had inherited when he passed away. But then there was this other walking stick that he had that had broken, and I just kept it in the corner for several years. And one day that old walking stick just looked at me and said, I need new life. So I made a knife out of that wood. My dad is in body and that wood. So what over time developed was a love of old wood and trying to connect the stories of people behind that wood with the stories today.

I’m Henry Freeman. He and him are my pronouns. I live here in Richmond, Indiana. I grew up in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Grew up as a Southern Baptists. My knives, I would describe them as comfortably at home in your great great grandmother’s kitchen. I started out with a small ad in Friends Journal and started selling them at the local farmers market. Making knives brings me a lot of joy, and it brings me joy as a Quaker because I connect to that of God within me, through this, in a way that I’m not otherwise.

Making a knife for me is sort of like meeting for worship in that you settle in. And there are parts of making that knife that are very routine that you can visually see: the forging of the steel, the shaping of the handle. I’ve gotten to the point that I can do that almost without thinking. The place that I really get to feel centered is when I get to the part of making the knife that really matters. With this cleaver, there’s all of this. But the cutting is in that minute end. When this cleaver is really sharp, when it cuts through something, the blade waves. That minute 1000th of an inch moves. And the only way you can do that, that you can even know it’s there, is feel. During some of the processes I’ll shut my eyes and just go into my fingers because it’s all “here”. It’s not here (pointing to his head). It’s here (pointing to his fingers). And there’s a connection with a reality that all of a sudden nobody else around knows. I mean, it’s your secret space as a knife maker.

People wonder, why do I refer to them as Quaker kitchen knives? And it’s because there’s a Quaker story behind most of my kitchen knives. This little paring knife, for example, is modeled after one that Jackie Stillwell, the head of Right Sharing of World Resources, well-known Quaker organization, (owns). I said, “I’m looking for a paring knife with a Quaker history.” Jackie showed me her little paring knife, held it up on Zoom, and she said, “Well, this one has been in my family for over 100 years. Now you can’t touch it.” I said, “Why?” (Jackie said), “Because when I was a little girl, my mother said, ‘No one touches this knife but me.’” The reason was that her mother said, “No one touches this knife, but me.” There are three generations embedded in that knife, and I want to make a knife, like Jackie’s knife, that is going to be around in 100 years and passed down.

This cleaver is modeled after one, another Quaker, John Helding. A cleaver that’s been in his family for 100 years and he still uses it. It was made in 1921 by his great grandfather as wedding gift to his bride. It’s the story that matters to me. That’s why I get up in the morning and do this because I just love stories. I’m not as much interested in making knives is I am making vessels that tell stories. For the kind of knives I make, there’s nothing frivolous about them. They’re just plain. They’re just metal and they’re old, old wood. And the wood has a story.

Let me give you an example. This wood is American chestnut. Which died out 100 years ago, and so it has the worm holes in it. The fact that the wood is extinct, the fact beetles made those holes, I don’t want to cover up the holes. I want to say, “Hey, I wonder what that beetle thought of when he was making that hole?” I view my job as a craftsman as bringing out the character of what’s there. So, the artist is the wood and the beetle and all of that. I’m just a vessel for bringing it out. This is a piece of cherry. It was a beam. It held up a barn in Randolph County, founded by Quakers in the 1840s. I’ve made these knives out of this cherry.

As crazy as it is, I want to connect the person each time they use this knife to the farmer in the 1850s, who sat under that large beam of wood, milking his cows, just living his life, and that old beam serve that farmer. To give new life to that wood, to someone cutting up vegetables in Bolivia, New Zealand, Australia, Spain. And to think that that old piece of wood is now all over the world, I think, “Wow, what fun!”

Discussion Question:

• What crafts, arts, or practices do you find worshipful?

The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.