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One of the 1000 copies produced with an original invitation card attached to the frontespiece and serial numbered. (300 were produced in leather, then 1000 further like this).
The notes inside the dustwrapper read:
In this book is the finest exhibition of Sheffield Knives seen since the nineteenth century expositions. Here you will see daggers and Bowies fit for a king - or an oriental potentate. There are multi-bladed sportsman's knives, some with horse-hoof picks, cartridge extractors and saws, fishing knives wth hook removers, fly-tying vises, and buttonhooks (for high button shoes). Some of the knives have been positively identified as being exhibited at the 1851 Exhibition at the Crystal Palace or in the Great Exposition in London in 1879.
The quality of the knives those old Sheffield cutlers made will never be equalled - and they did it all with antiquated hand tools, without any modern power tools, working by the dim lighht of a grey English sky that filtered through a small window covered with the smoke and grime of fifty years of coal smoke.
 Here you will see knives with interchangeable blades, folding dirk knives with carved pearl handles from the 1830s, cased penknives with engraved gold bolsters and a cock spur marked "Cutlers to the King". The sizes go from diminutive knives that were made to shape goose quills into writing pens to a sword cane with a blade 28" long.
Since this book is a display of the world's finest knives, it was necessary to supplement the outstanding pictures with a group of writings from some of the world's finest knife experts. We have that with chapters from Bill Adams, Bernard Levine, and Jim Taylor. The photography by Kelly James is spectacular.
You will see in this book the finest that history has to offer in the cutlery world. These knives were not made to be sold. These were made to be "exhibited" and then retired to the factory as part of the factory collection for posterity. There is very little in this world that has ever been made in which the immediate purpose was for posterity, for culture, for quality, for exhibition - for themselves; they shout with a loud voice of their birthright. We stand in awe as we celebrate in this book, the best of the best.
Whatever leads you to the subject of knives this book and the wealth of quality contained within is bound to give an appreciation of some of the finest exhibition knives made and a deep admiration for the workers who produced them. It is an amazing collection, and one any knife enthusiast must have.
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