All About Pocket Knives

Picked these two knives up today at a local antique shop. The Thornton picture handle knife is a bit unusual in that the one side has the usual bathing beauty picture but the other side has what looks to be pictures fro a high school yearbook.Upon looking at this side closely it appears that there is another bathing beauty picture beneath the two pictures.It looks like they were put in at the factory rather than at a later time. The only time I have seen picture handle knives with custom pictures in them was the old Novelty Cutlery Co and Canton Cutlery Co. knives of the 1920's and 30's.
As I recall Thornton was only in business for a short time in the 1940's. and every one I have seen has one of several different bathing beauty pictures.The knife's construction is the bolsters being punched from the liner material which I believe was first used in the mid to late 1930's.A curiosity to be sure.
The second knife is a so-called,"penny knife" with a simple turned wood handle and sheet metal bolster in the tradition of the Opinel knife and stamped,"A.B.Newman Austria".
Still trying to find out info on this company;no listing in Goins.

Can you imagine letting that Thornton out of your family

garddogg56 wrote: Can you imagine letting that Thornton out of your family

I can imagine it probably belonged to one of the people in the pictures and when they passed on it was scooped up while cleaning out their effects and either sold to a buyer or scrapped.If my time line is right they probably graduated from high school in the late 1940's which would put them in their 80's now if they are still alive.
This is what I love about knife collecting;finding something that obviously has a story behind it but probably will never know.

......k7k,that "picture handle" knife is very unusual!!!..do you think the owner might have done that??....hard to imagine it being done at the factory!!!............. ..........................

I think somebody, probably the male in those pictures, did a slick job of lifting the handles a bit and inserting those two photos. I've never seen anything from Thornton that indicated they did special order work.

Charlie Noyes

......that was my thought, too, Charlie.....seems like somewhere on aapk, someone posted a knife like this one that they had done this to, but I can't find it................. ......................

I believe that was what was done and whomever did it was very careful not only to not crack the handles(very easy to do on these knives) but somehow managed to thin out the thickness of the pictures quite drastically.Another thing about this knife is the stamped bolsters as part of the liners:the other Thornton picture handle knife has one piece cast aluminum bolsters and liners.
Whatever the case it is definitely a one of a kind knife and I'd love to know the story behind it.

With another picture under the year book pictures I would guess they were put in there by the owner but around 1900 to 1920 you could order most patterns with your own pictures from a number of knife companies. I have a HS&B lg coke bottle with pictures, a date, and a town and I found the grandkids and the origional homestead location, and a whittler picture handle knife I bought 120 miles away from my hometown had a name and the town I went to high school in and I got the history of the knife and spoke to several of the grandkids and a 100 year old son of the name on the knife. In both cases I offered the knives back to the families for what I paid for them and they declined the offer. I had a ball researching them and actually found friends of mine who knew the families in both instances. I had a little more to go on than you do though. Good luck. ____Dave