History has been filled with necessity and ingenuity, two things that, when together, are the mother and father of invention. You can see this throughout the generations with even as something as simple as paper. The history of putting ideas on paper is as old as civilization itself, from clay tablets of antiquity detailing receipts for livestock, to Papyrus in the days of Egypt at the height of its power, to the wax designed tablets in the Mediterranean; all these ideas shaped, formed and evolved into our current paper. Alongside paper came a necessity for a way to mass produce and share information with the population. With that necessity came ingenuity. Johannes Gutenberg of Germany, inspired by his father’s work as a minter, devised the first widely-recognized printing press and jumpstarted several key changes of society as a whole, allowing the Renaissance, the Reformation and even the scientific revolution to flourish due to new ideas and concepts finally being able to spread across the world properly.
Case is no exception to innovation. In the days long before inkjet printing or Xeroxing, they were already producing fliers using a technique called Woodblock printing. The way it worked was by etching designs onto a metal frame, then, typically with a wooden block, the etch was lightly coated with ink and then pressed onto whatever material you wanted the design to be on; be it textiles or, in Case’s works, paper. This technique allowed the designs and styles of the knives to be displayed and shown long before photography was economically viable as a means to showcase products. Woodblock printing alongside the printing press was a key component to Case evolving into the company it is today.
In honor of this, Case is coming out with a new series to celebrate its early roots: the Woodblock series. These knives, available in both a trapper and mini trapper, with other patterns to be announced, is an always popular natural bone, with a laser-etched depiction on the handle of one of the designs from the woodblock. Interesting and unique, the Woodblock series is sure to draw some eyes.