All About Pocket Knives

Trying to get info on the date of this knife I picked up. I've seen similar with risqué ones but none that are full nude. Colonial knives are hard to date it seems. I've posted photos.
Any info about this knife or when it was produced would be great.
Thanks

My guess would be late 40s or early 50s.

The following is my understanding of picture knives from years of reading and research. Ariel knife company, to increase sales, invented clear plastic type handles. You could send in pictures and have them placed under the plastic and returned to you. I have seen many pictures of young boys under knife scales. Nudes pictures were not as common but not rare. Supposedly these were girlfriends or wives. I have one with an old man standing next to a horse drawn piece of farm machinery. The man's name and an extinct Colorado town was on the other side. The town failed to exist after 1924.

Wow.. that's great information. Do you know what years they ran these types of handles? So this may be a picture of someone's wife or girlfriend. Very interesting marketing idea. I've seen knives with women in underwear but no nudes. I guess it depends on how risqué of a picture they wanted to send in for the handle. Lol

Thanks for the info

I would say most of the nudes and bathing beauties would be models not family members or girlfriends.
The ones Wabash made were models mostly from Chicago.

Hopefully someone with more information than what I know on the subject will add or correct my limited knowledge.

I don't know enough to pinpoint it but definitely pre-WWII and probably pre-1930. I like it.

Those old Colonials were "no frills" knives, just the bare essentials. (Somebody had to do it!) J.O'.

Ridgegrass wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2024 3:56 pm Those old Colonials were "no frills" knives, just the bare essentials. (Somebody had to do it!) J.O'.

haha

I have had some of these knives that were very well made

Now you fellow members have ruined all my fun. I had always heard that the semi nudes and full nudes were wives or girlfriends. I know that the knives with young boys pictured were almost always pictures of the owners of the knives. Parents would send in pictures of the boy to receive the knife as a gift and it would be returned with his photo under the scales. As mentioned earlier, I have a large coke bottle knife with an older man and his name under the scales.

A little aside: Picture knives were also made by Aerial, Canton Cutlery Co., Novelty, and Novelty's,"Canton Knife Co.". Below are some pics of :

1. A Novelty "moose" that had beautiful pictures of the owner and the streetcars he conducted. Sadly the celluloid outgassed and ruined it so I rehandled it in Brazilian rosewood.
2.-3.: The marks of Novelty and Maj. August Vignos, (one-armed Civil War vet, owner of the company) on the moose.
4.-5.: A 1914 salesman's envelope. I guess to mail the customer's pictures for the handles.
6.-7.-8.: A Canton Cutlery Co., swell-center, 4 blade pen with a soldier's name and outfit at Ft. Greble, Rhode Island. (A coastal defense fort named for John T. Greble, first West Point grad to die in the Civil War. His dog is also pictured. Probably a gift from his family?
One can learn a little history from and old knife.
J.O'.

I've never seen a Colonial like that with the picture handles. Is it possible that Colonial blade(s) have been added to another knife with picture handles?