All About Pocket Knives

Help identifying this, possibly Victorian era, mother of pearl
with gold bolsters pocket knife.
Tang stamp reads "LAM" and possibly an "I" or a "P"...so "LAMI"
"LAMP"? The biggest clue is what
Looks to be an Iron cross stamp
on the tang!

Cool knife. Maybe a Rodgers Sheffield product? I was really excited when I saw the "gold bolsters" in your description. But, I don't see any bolsters, let alone "gold bolsters". However, I do see brass liners.

I agree, no bolsters evident on the knife. I suspect the reference is to the brass liners. The presence of the button hook may be a clue that it dates to late 1800s to around WWI, when buttons were in style for shoes and gloves. The small corkscrew was for opening bottles of cologne, medicines, etc. Could be English, Czech, Prussian or German. If made for export to the U.S., lack of any country of origin markings would put its manufacture pre-1890s.

Maybe just a slip and meant to say liners, but if not the OP might find this drawing useful. It is from the AAPK Research section depicting pocket knife parts. https://www.allaboutpocketknives.com/ca ... components. From it you can see a bolster, liner, etc on a knife of typical construction. The OP knife has no bolsters.

Ken

Yeah, my bad on the knife anatomy confusion. Indeed I meant "liners" or "internal scales"...and not "bolsters". As for whether or not they're gold, I think someone had mentioned brass. But if that were the case...wouldn't there be the presents of tarnish or zincification on 100+ year old brass? When I look at these "liners" I don't see any evidence of tarnish!

They are brass, I think if they were gold you'd probably see no indication of liners anymore.
And I'd think this came after early swiss army patterns immerged, so minimally in the 1900's -- I suspect.

Multi-blade knives having as many as 10 to 20 (sometimes more) tools, as varied as corkscrews, scissors, button hooks, earwax spoons, mustache combs, awls, etc, often with MOP or genuine tortoise shell covers, were made by some cutleries as early the mid-1800s. Somewhere I have a book about such knives made by Sheffield cutleries for display at exhibitions. Many knives from English and German cutlers were quite intricate and ornate by the mid-1800s, many were on display at the 1851 World Exhibition in London, England.

Those knives were made to show off the skill of those cutlers. The thought that they made such works of art using the tools available at the time, is astounding to me. I don’t know for sure the age of the OP knife, but as posted previously its tools and markings are indicative of late Victorian (or early post-Victorian) era, and with no COO stamp probably pre-1890. I’m not familiar with the history of Swiss Army knives (their advertising says “since 1897”).

Ken