Opinel knives and their self-presented heritage

Sunday 1st August, 2021 - Bruce Sterling

*It’s hard not to like European regional heritage craft propaganda. Especially when it’s handsomely composed and shot, like this.

*It seems that every Alpine valley, no matter how small, had a blacksmith with some local scheme for how to do even the simplest matters in ironwork. It’s like a tool version of odd regional dialects.

*Opinel survived, thrived and went global in a big way, but if you venture into an off-season ski town up in the Alps, it’s common to meander into a local-souvenir shop and see some real oddities in the way of knives and farm-tools.