Mightier Than

Part of ‘From Swords into Ploughshares’ touring exhibition.

Taking it’s name from the Edward Bulwer - Lytton quote ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’, this piece was commissioned for a touring exhibition and each artist was given a knife as the starting point. The knives were replicas of ones that had been handed in to the police as part of a weapons amnesty. Im Jeff’s case he was given a cheap kitchen knife with a plastic handle and flat ground blade. Using every part of the knife, Jeff made this stunning necklace and found inspiration from the Bulwer-Lytton quote.

Jeff’s statement from the exhibition catalogue says:

I felt a sense duty with this brief, for a long time I earned my living by making knives that myself and my partner Sarah Featherstone believed to be above and beyond the issue of knife crime.

I gave myself some simple design constraints to work within: use as much of the supplied knife as possible and to hint at a positive way forward with the theme.

At first the materials of this cheap kitchen knife were not inspiring, a basic heat treated stainless steel and simply moulded plastic handle. By de-constructing the handle I gave myself time to treat the materials with care, sanding the slices until a smooth surface was revealed. The air pockets in some of the slices are random events that might not have been understood or controlled by the original manufacturer, similar to our own reactions to ‘controlling’ crime.

I wanted to central pendant to hint at the idea of ‘The Pen is Mightier than the sword’. The blade steel was softened and cut with a jeweller’s saw into a pattern I remember doodling in my own school workbooks. I guess this is my quiet comment that providing people with education and opportunity is the best way to counter knife crime.

Title of the piece: Mightier Than

Price £750