A Treatise on Pocket Knives

Los Angeles: [Printed by Will Cheney at the Press in the Gatehouse,] 1964 First edition. Based on Cheney's usual limitations for similar items, he probably printed around 100 or 150 copies. He printed a second edition in 1968 (Los Angeles Typesticker, 71). The note included in the present item has been written on the blank verso of a stray page (24) from another copy of A Treatise on Pocket Knives; however, the page is printed on a different paper stock than the present item and, in addition, the verso of page 24 in the present item is printed with text. Thus, the note may be written on a proof page.. Original orange-brown printed stiff paper wrappers lettered in black. Sewn with tan cord. Fore-edge untrimmed. With an unsigned note laid in: "This one sewn on cords. Only one in the lot so sewn," in contrast to the white thread used to sew other copies. 3 x 4. With decorative initials and 3 pages of illustrations of different varieties of pocketknives. A fine copy. Some of the knife styles Cheney notes in A Treatise on Pocket Knives include the curved bistoury blade, used by surgeons and tailors alike and the seventeenth-century typesetter's coping blade (p. 32). He contextualizes the styles of knives by offering a history of their production and popularity. The Barlow knife, Cheney explains, was "a medium-sized knife designed for cheapness and durability." This pocketknife was "the knife Tom Sawyer had and was the characteristic boy's knife of the 19th and early 20th centuries," (p. 12).