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The National Knife Museum IS Moving...

The Officers, Directors, Staff, and Members of the NKCA, sincerely thank Smoky Mountain Knife Works / Kevin Pipes for giving our collection of cutlery a home these past seven years. As most of you know, we moved our oriignal Museum (built in 1981) from Chattanooga to Sevierville, TN, in November 2007 and it is now time to relocate to a different facility.
 
The Board of Directors may have found us an exciting new home, but we will not know all the details until a little later. Once permament arrangements have been made, the new location and the "Grand Opening" date will be announced. 
 
Once again, we thank SMKW for all they have done to help promote the National Knife Museum and the hobby of knife collecting. 
 
Sincerely,
 

Janice D Carter
NKM Board

Tags: Knife, Museum, National, is, moving

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Michael,

The Museum will remain a Chartered Museum, it is not disbanding.  Yes it is financial.
Michael D. said:

I heard that the museum is dissolving (via BLADE eMagazine) and that the collection is being dispersed among three museums. Jan, I believe it's none of the museums in this post.I also heard that certain important collections from the museum will become part of a traveling display at various other museums. Is this info true? 

Could you give us a quick rundown of what happened? I belonged to the museum for years then poof, I stopped receiving renewal notices, the website became a static info page, etc. Was it finances? They paid a dollar a year to SMKW for the mezzanine space. Leadership? Direction - mission statement?

This is a copy of what I sent out this morning in the iKC newsletter

The National Knife Museum
This is not an official release, it is MY statement

The Officers, Directors, Staff, and Members of the NKCA, sincerely thank Smoky Mountain Knife Works / Kevin Pipes for giving our collection of cutlery a home these past seven years. As most of you know, we moved our original Museum (built in 1981) from Chattanooga to Sevierville, TN, in November 2007 and it is now time to relocate to a different facility.
The above notice is what would have notified many of you that the Museum is making some changes. A subject near and dear to my heart is the knives that have for many years been donated so that we, as collectors, could see them, learn from them and just enjoy them.


The museum struggled for years to meet the demands of payroll, taxes. insurance, ect. My personal and sincere Thank you to everyone that donated even one dollar to help make this dream a reality. I know there are a great many rumors going on about what will happen. I have tried to keep everyone up to date in the forum and wanted to share that there is more news.
Additional Museums and areas of the country will be able to see and enjoy the collection for many years to come. Though they will not all be housed under one roof any longer they will be on display.
With Museums located in Alabama, Virginia, and New York, more people will be able to make the trip to see more cutlery on display. Please understand, the Museum is NOT disbanding. We will continue to hold our charter. Some knives will be gifted to the museums we have chosen and some items are on loan.
The original intent of the museum was that the knives would be on display and available to the public. The root of each and every decision made by the board was based on that.
To every person that ever served, everyone that donated and all the people that helped to maintain the knives in good shape……...THANK YOU
It is in your honor that we made certain the collection will remain in the public eye.
This is not an official release, it is MY statement. My views have been well known, long before I was asked to join the board. My only concern was with the preservation of the collection and the dream that one day you will ALL be able to take your grandchildren to see it.
Come see the recipients, plan a trip for next year. See the country, see the knives.

Thanks for the info. Much appreciated. Haven't checked for the newsletter yet.

Michael, 

Thanks for asking.  truly!

It's a little sad though. That museum was founded at the same time knife collecting started to take off in the US.

It is sad Michael.  But it would have been even more sad in my eyes if it had gone back into storage for an undetermined amount of time.  It was meant to be enjoyed

.

as I said earlier the museum will be selling a limited number of peices.  It will help meet the expenses in place and any in the future year.  Even if your not interested in buying, go take a look.  There is history in these knives....http://jbrucevoyles.cusauctions.com/?auction=auc74&toa=get_cati...

The Janney Furnace is having a grand reopening this weekend to show off the knives they received!  This article ran in the Anniston Star newspaper today

Posted: Monday, June 23, 2014 9:00 am | Updated: 12:46 pm, Mon Jun 23, 2014.

Two Calhoun County museums are now home to more than 3,000 knives, swords and other edged tools after the closure of a Tennessee knife museum.

The National Knife Museum of Sevierville closed its doors at the end of May. Brad Vice, who is president of the museum’s board of directors, says it relied on support from members and sponsor companies to make ends meet. It fell on tough times when that support started fading.

Besides being the president of the museum’s board of directors, Vice owns Alabama Damascus Steel in Jacksonville, which supplies many of the nation's knife makers with metal for blades.

The museum had been housed in Smoky Mountain Knife Works, but the store told the museum that they needed that space back. Vice and the rest of the board were left with a sharp problem: Either liquidate the museum’s large collection of knives and swords, or find another nonprofit organization to take them.

So he and the board of directors “decided to give a third of the knives to the Berman Museum, a third to the Janney Furnace museum, and a third to the NRA,” Vice said.

“We wanted to bring the knives home so that everyone can enjoy them without breaking their pockets,” he added.

Robert Lindley, director of the Janney Furnace museum, said the museum has 1,700 new pieces, thanks to the National Knife Museum’s donation.

The donation consisted of “historically significant edged tools,” said Lindley, including 40 custom-made knives gathered by collector Joe Druin and valued at $125,000. That collection belongs to the Knifemakers Guild of America, which loaned it to Janney Furnace through the National Knife Museum.

Lindley values the portion of the collection that Janney Furnace received at more than half a million dollars.

Lindley said Janney Furnace is displaying about three quarters of the collection they received, according to him. “We’ve got a timeline exhibit that begins with stone tools, like flint knives, and goes all the way up to 20th century tools, like surgical and bleeding knives,” he said.

The second display area containing items donated by the National Knife Museum consists of historical knives and swords. One exhibit is called “Your Grandfather’s Knife,” and features pocketknives popular among men in the 1940s from knife makers such as Camillus and Case.

“Probably our most unusual piece is the astronaut survival knife,” said Lindley.

Janney Furnace acquired the donation last month.

“We had the entire donation in two weeks, and then we closed the museum to the public for two weeks to get the collection ready to display,” Lindley said.

He had no trouble displaying the items because the National Knife Museum also gave Janney Furnace cabinets. Lindley estimates that there are about 50 additional displays in storage. Each display can be rotated into the collection so that visitors have the opportunity to see something different every time they go.

Lindley said he’s already seen an increase in traffic at his museum due to the donation.

“People hear about it through word of mouth and come to see the collection, plus the other items we have on display,” he said.

Anniston’s Berman Museum of World History received 1,296 items from the National Knife Museum, according to the museum’s collections assistant, Adam Cleveland.

“We got knives from just about every era,” he said.

The museum also got an educational timeline piece on W.R. Case & Sons Cutlery Co. knives.

“It shows the beginning of Case knives all the way up to today. It’s one of the most complete timelines on Case every done,” he said.

The Berman Museum is still working on cataloging everything it received in the donation, and most of the items are stored in the museum vaults. Cleveland hopes that some of the knives will be rotated into exhibits soon.

Vice said that in another year, the National Knife Museum “will probably be dissolved and go away. There’s just not any call for it anymore.”

James F. Parker started the National Knife Museum in 1981. He formed Parker-Edwards Cutlery with knifemaker Fain Edwards in Jacksonville in the 1960s. Bear and Sons Cutlery now operates in that company’s facility.

The NKCA officially shuts down. According to the Tennessee Secretary of State’s Office, the National Knife Collectors Association has been Administratively Dissolved in its home state of Tennessee, effective August 1, 2016.

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