Ron Lake – The “Interframe Style”

The Loveless method having proven its worth for the straight knife, there only remained to adopt it to folding knife.

Bordered by Lake Michigan, Illinois is that state where nature runs free. Opportunities for hunting, fishing and hiking are not in short supply, although each inhabitant jealously guards his territory. Young Ron Lake started out by using knives from the major brands that were easy to get hold of in the shops. He soon began disassembling them to find out how the mechanisms worked. He would then adjust them before reassembling them. These improvements did not go unnoticed, which gave him the idea of making knives from scratch. He took part in his first knife show in 1968, where all of his models sold in record time.

He mixed with numerous artists in Chicago who encouraged the development of his aesthetic sense and instilled the principals of art in him, both in terms of form and strategy. He understood that if he wanted to make it in the cutlery trade, which was starting to get a little overloaded, then he would have to stand out from the competition through a completely original style.

So what was the young Lake Specificity? The perfection of the fitting, the incomparable precision of the mechanism, the art of the interframe in fact. Instead of a “solid handle,” that is to say instead of plaques of a chosen material fixed onto plates of miters placed at the front and back, the handle is produced in solid metal, but with wide gaps in which the decorative material is placed, either stag’s antler or mouflon horn.

A Ron Lake knife is instantly recognizable, since the button for the switchblade mechanism is not placed conventionally on the back, but at the very end, in the form of a little lever. A precision mechanism, decorative appearance similar to a precious ornament and one-of-a-kind models that were very difficult to get hold of, Ron Lake’s knives signaled the start of a new “art” cutlery.