Dwight Towell, the Quiet Man From Idaho

He almost blushes as he pulls out the knife he keeps in his jeans pocket, a folding knife purchased through a mail-order catalog for $20.

I can’t keep a knife, Dwight Towell says with a sheepish grin. Every time I make a knife for myself, somebody wants to buy it. That’s about as close as he comes to boasting. He’d never say so, but Towell is one of the top knifemakers in the world. Collectors pay thousands for the handmade knives that come from the austere little shop on his Midvale, Idaho. The wait for a Dwight Towell custom knife: five to six years.

A recipient of this year’s Governor’s Awards in the Arts, Towell is no stranger to prizes. They include the American Knifemakers Guild’s top award and the Beretta Award for outstanding achievement in cutlery. A Towell dagger engraved with gold on blued steel graced the cover of a brochure for the Art Knife Invitational in San Diego, to which only the world’s top knifemakers are invited. It sold for $12,800.

Dwight, quite simply, is one of the half dozen finest knifemakers in the world, and since there can be no fine art without craft, an incredibly talented artist by any measure, said Cort Conley of the Idaho Commission on the Arts. That he could manage this while being an admirable husband, father and rancher humbles most everyone who knows him.

The Towells have ranched in the Midvale area since his great grandfather, Alexander Towell, homesteaded there in 1881. As a boy, Dwight Towell always had a knife. I was always whittling or carving my initials in something. He and his wife, Celia, ranched and raised their family less than a mile from his great grandfather’s homestead. He made his first knife, a hunting knife for his son, in 1966.

There were only about two-dozen people in the country making handmade knives then he said. They wanted $7 for a hunting knife. I thought that was a terrible price for a knife so I made my own. That led to more and better knives, friendships with master knifemakers and an apprenticeship with Winston Churchill of Vermont, one of the world’s top engravers. The output that began with a single hunting knife now stands at more than 1,200 knives.

In 2004 Towell retired from raising cattle hay and alfalfa, his son-in-law handles the ranching now, to devote himself full-time to knife making. At 76, he still looks like the rancher he is, jeans, flannel shirts, Western hat and still works in his shop every day.

His current project is an engraved dagger decorated with 14- and 24-karat gold and semiprecious stone from Russia. Thirty-eight hours into it — Cilia Towell keeps track of his hours — he estimated that it was 25 percent finished. The knife is a high-school graduation gift, the sixth he’s made for a grandchild.

Prices for his working knives, as opposed to what he refers to as fancy knives, start at $350. Enthusiasts buy them for their workmanship and high-quality steel, known for holding an edge.

One of my customers is pretty high up in Coca Cola, he said. He sent a knife back to me to be sharpened, and I still could cut the hair on my arm with it. When I asked him what he’d done with it, he said he’d used it to skin three bull elk. Another knife, returned after an African hunting trip, really did need sharpening.

He’d used that one to skin a hippo. Increased emphasis on fancy knives” has reduced his production to about a dozen knives a year. Fancy knives take far longer to make than working knives do (220 hours for the $12,800 dagger).

He starts by drawing a design on paper. Then he outlines the knife’s shape with a carbide-tipped scriber on a bar of steel and cuts it with a band saw. Grinding and sanding with ever-finer sandpaper, ending with a hand-rubbed finish, follow that. The only thing he doesn’t do himself is heat-treating, which he hires out to a specialist with an atmosphere-controlled furnace in California. Towell engraves the knives with help from a microscope and air-driven graver tools. The finished product can include gold, jade, Seraphinite, springbok antler, mastodon ivory or other exotic components. I like designing knives and working with new materials, he said. Each knife is a new challenge. One thing his plans don’t include is retirement.

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.