CHARNEY HALL Knives!


A typical promotional penknife


AAAH knives! I remember them well! Every schoolboys’ ‘must have’. What was it - Practicality? Prowess? Power? or just plain Peer Pressure that generated that intense feeling of desire?


It didn’t take long for me to convince myself that having a decent penknife at Charney was essential. If parents did not respond to a subtle oblique request, then a friend’s-father’s-business’s-promotional-penknife would have to do…


Small and rectangular in shape, less that 2” in length, with white pearlescent chamfered plastic sides it was designed to display an imprinted logo and text both faces and was given out like sweets to close friends. Most had a single blade one side and a bottle opener/screw driver flat the other. Being new the thin blade was exceedingly sharp - ideal for whittling, boring holes, cutting matchsticks and carving initials in desk tops á la Holmes-Higgin - oh!- and sharpening pencils!


I can’t ever remember using one to open a bottle or drive home a screw. 


Like all schoolboy fads it fired the imagination - from a small spark of an idea grew something quite fantastical and it was not long before someone brought one back ….a Vitorinox Swiss Army Knife….


Note the price…



Even in those days Swiss engineering had created monsters, some at least 2 inches possibly 3  wide, almost impossible to hold and safely control and certainly not one for the pocket. The Hunter, the Handyman, the Climber are familiar names and are still manufactured and I’m sure that I remember one or two boys having one of these more ‘modest’ editions. I remember thinking who would ever have to extract a stone out of a horse’s hoof? What tree could I possibly cut down with that serrated saw blade? How could I cut anything but the smallest scrap of paper with those scissors. The opening of a wine bottle would have to wait till I turned (was it?)…18?


The Mother of them all…


Today Vitorinox, with a fickleness reminiscent of the mind of a vintage Charney schoolboy, has diversified into cutlery, watches, travel gear and believe it or not - fragrances! Yes I do remember that the mixture of fresh oil, cold steel and red plastic was faintly aphrodisiacal! 



https://www.victorinox.com/en-GB/All-about-Victorinox/cms/about-victorinox/














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