The most famous French knife: Laguiole.

In the year 1829 Pierre-Jean Calmels - from a small town in France called Laguiole- made the first Laguiole, a combination from the Spanish Navaja knife and a French farmers knife ( the Capuchadou). This knife had only a blade and a small widening at the front side of the spring called the ‘fly’ (la mouche in French; I will give you some translations but you may as well forget them).

It is claimed that Napoleon the third gave the people of Laguiole the privilege to use the “Napoleonic Bee” ( une abeille) on their knives as a reward for choosing his side at a regional uprising. And so that front part of the spring was still called the ‘fly’, but it had the shape of a bee………
Nowadays it can have several shapes but the bee is still the most common one.
At about 1840 the ‘punch’ (le poinçon) was added to the knife and in 1880 the corckscrew (le tire-bouchon).

The knife was often used by  shepherds, to cut their bread and open a bottle of wine.  The punch was used to release gas from a cows stomach when she had a bad digestion.
On one side of the handle an ornament was made (le cloutage) in the shape of a cross so that the shepherd always had a cross to pray.

The materials used for the handles were just local materials like wood, horn and bone.
These days there is a much larger variety of materials used and the back of the spring often has  very nice decorations (guillochage) made with a burin or file , some knifes actually look like a piece of art.
 
Laguiole is a type of knife, not a protected brand!
This means that everybody can make such a knife and call it a Laguiole. And so, unfortunately, there is a lot of poor quality coming from China, Pakistan and even France itself.
On the other hand it also means that there are master Laguiole makers who are not French at all.

To be continued………