Allen Elishewitz Artistry in Tacticals

Allen was born in Texas and lived most of his life there. He also lived in Indonesia, Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand. His interest in knives started at a very young age. He also practices different martial arts over the past 30 years like Okinawan Te, Thai Boxing, Northern Shaolin and Kali. This training, along with my experiences as a Recon Marine, gave me the perfect background to design both defense and utility knives.

During the time, Allen spent at the 4^th Recon C Company, he was a Team Leader in charge of a Deep Recon Platoon. He was trained in Artillery Call for Fire, Naval Call for Fire, SOTG, Amphibious Recon and many in-company trainings. After receiving his Bachelor in Criminal Justice, Allen started making knives part time while in college and decided to become a full-time knifemaker after graduating in 1988. He has since then been constantly researching, refining and developing his craft.

From an early age, Allen was exposed and trained in various forms of art. Some of these forms are acid etching, printing, drawing, painting, architectural drafting, guilloche work and enameling. In 1985, he won the First Place at the Asian Art Fair in Singapore with a five-color print. He was the first knifemaker to introduce the lost are of guilloche to the cutlery world.

He is currently doing research and study of watches. In 2002 he began making watches, he makes everything on the watch except the movement, crystal and hands. His goal is to eventually modify movements and construct my own hands.

Valerie Elishewitz was born in France where she lived until moving to the US in 1995. She has a Bachelor Degree in Law and speaks French and English fluently.

Valerie has worked as an Assistant Manger and a Manager of different retail operations in France. She also has a solid experience as an Executive Assistant with two major American Companies in France.

At Elishewitz Custom Knives, Valerie takes care of all the administrative and bookkeeping aspects of the business as well as marketing, promotion and sales. She attends most of the knife shows with Allen. She also maintains the web site for Allen. She recently has taken an interest in photography and enjoys photos of Allen’s creations that appear on the website.