In a live wire who always carries a blade, THEO PANAYIDES finds that Unesco – and a passion for an ancient craft – drive one of a dwindling breed of craftsmen
Knives are trendy; they always have been. Forged in Fire is a hit on the History Channel, pitting American ‘bladesmiths’ in a contest to forge the finest blade – but prehistoric man was just as keen on knives, probably keener. Knives allowed mastery over Nature, and dominion over other prehistoric men; they were the weapons of the Iron Age, humanity’s gateway to ancient history. These are the thoughts running (rather incongruously) through my head as I stand outside a shop in central Nicosia on Christmas Eve, feeling increasingly baffled.
It’s the right address, on a main road near the Venetian walls – but I don’t see the small craftsman’s eyrie I was expecting, just a locked door and a shop next door selling auto parts. A young man named Ciprian puts me out of my misery, emerging from the shop to beckon me inside – and there, among the stacked, dusty boxes of air filters and disc brake pads are two upright cabinets full of handmade knives, while sitting at a desk in the corner is the knife maker himself, George Tsiappas.
The car-parts shop is his main business, founded by his father in 1961 – but knives are his passion, and always have been. They fascinated him as a small child, earning him many a spanking for playing with knives and hurting himself. He’s always carried a knife about with him, though never drawn one in anger; they’re for cutting knots, slicing fruit, maybe tearing boxes open in the shop “in the old days, when business was good”. He has five or six in a box on his desk, and another one in his car. Even at his wedding, in 1995, there was a folding knife tucked away in the pocket of his wedding suit during the ceremony. “I can’t imagine being out, or being somewhere, without having a knife on me.”
Making knives is a whole other passion, of course – though he wasn’t really able to start till his early 40s (he’s now 55) when the family moved from a flat to a house, allowing him to build a small workshop where he taught himself the craft by trial and error. He’s there every day, George tells me, every single day; even if he gets home too late to do any work – he’s usually at the car-parts shop from 6am, and home by 5.30pm – he’ll go in the workshop for 10 minutes, just to feel like he’s been there. There’s another, smaller workspace at the back of the shop, and he shows me around: on the floor, around a buzz saw, is a pile of husks – the discarded remains of the animal horns (rams and goats, all sourced locally) which he uses for handles, only the top of the horn being thick enough to be any use. The stench when he’s slicing through a horn is overpowering, he admits; Ciprian doesn’t even come in, just calls to him from the doorway if a customer needs anything.
The reason he gets to spend time cutting blades and fashioning handles at the back of the shop, of course, is because the car-parts business isn’t what it was; he used to employ 14 people here – “eight phone lines, ringing off the hook” – now he just employs one. His troubles pre-date the Covid crisis, or indeed the financial crisis; the crux seems to be that he mostly sells parts for older cars (I assume the newer brands have exclusive deals with local representatives), most of which were forced off the roads some years ago. Making knives has filled the gap, in many ways – especially in the past three years when he’s moved into a very specific field of knife making: ‘Lapithos knives’, the small pocket knives – traditionally made in the occupied village of Lapithos – which are also, since 2017, part of the ‘intangible heritage of Cyprus’ as adjudged by Unesco.
The two cabinets at the front of the shop actually hold quite separate products. One is filled with the knives he used to make, sporting varied designs and wooden handles (olive and rosewood, mostly). The other has Lapithos knives, made to very particular specifications. The blade is carbon (not stainless) steel; the handle is horn, not wood or plastic. There’s a little ridge halfway down the handle, and sometimes a copper band at the junction of horn and steel. The larger knives are V-shaped at the bottom, allowing more purchase if you’re stabbing vertically downwards, cutting an animal’s throat for instance (this type of knife is called a ‘sfachtis’, or ‘slaughterer’); most have a groove at the side of the blade, allowing air to flood in from outside so the animal dies quicker. George has no family connection to Lapithos – but, ever since he became one of only two people in Cyprus making Lapithos knives (the other is Mr. Neoptolemos, the village mayor), he’s become quite besotted with the place. Did I know there were 3,800 inhabitants in 1974, seven churches and 13 flour mills? Was I aware there were some 50 ironworks in Lapithos, that they supplied the whole of Cyprus with knives, that nearly half the families lived by making tools? I wasn’t, actually.
He’s that kind of character, the kind who’ll bombard you with facts and figures; indeed, he’s a bit of a character. On the one hand he comes off as a talker, a raconteur, a cheeky rascal, with the easy confidence of the lifelong entrepreneur. “You know what they say, laws are made to be broken!” he quips at one point. He seems generous, expansive, a natural leader or teacher (he could teach anyone how to make knives in 20 days, he declares – at least if they wanted to learn, which no young person seems to at the moment). At one point a woman comes in selling highlighters (a beggar, basically); George jokes with her, doesn’t condescend, playfully notes that her prices aren’t very Christmassy – then buys a pen with a comradely flourish, grandly refusing my offer to go halves.
All this on one side; but he also has a fussier, more methodical side – a craftsman’s side. “At the entrance to my workshop [at home],” he says, “you’ll see about 400 hand tools, one next to the other.” When he opens the door, he can tell at a glance if, for instance, his wife used the gardening shears during the day and put them back in the wrong place, or his 16-year-old son used a wrench to fix his bike and forgot to replace it; he likes everything to be just-so. He can reel off factoids, and is very precise with numbers. 3,800 inhabitants, seven churches, 13 flour mills. It was on February 7, 2013, he recalls as if testifying in court, at 2.15am, that he had his severe myocardial infarction; simply put, a heart attack.
That, of course, is a whole other facet – and a whole other life change, mirroring the more gradual change from business owner to knife maker. He was only 47 when he woke up one night – at 2.15am – drenched in sweat, even though it was February. He didn’t feel any pain otherwise (it was quite a “sneaky” heart attack), so he washed his face, changed pyjamas and went back to sleep. In the morning he arrived at the shop as usual and went upstairs to his office (this was still when he had 15 people working here). “I go up…” he recalls, and gestures to indicate lighting a cigarette: “Rothmans. Had a cig, had another one – then I get a pain. So I thought to myself, ‘Wait, did something happen?’.” At 7.40am he went to A&E where, 10 minutes later, a young doctor gave him a cardiogram; he could tell from the doctor’s face that something was very wrong indeed.
His central artery was blocked, it turned out, “one of the worst infarctions: 33 out of 100 people don’t wake up, they go straight to the graveyard. That’s why I always say I don’t have to play Joker anymore, I won my Joker in 2013!” The artery was cleared without an operation, but the damage was done: his heart now works at around 30 per cent, says George soberly, and he’s going to need a pacemaker soon. (He’s waiting for the virus to subside, being in the vulnerable groups.) It’s unclear how his health problems dovetail with his work – but I get a sense he’s changed significantly from the man he was eight years ago, when both health and work were more straightforward.
George Tsiappas is an interesting case, part of a Cypriot tradition – the small family business handed down from father to son – who’s slowly migrated to another, far more ancient Cypriot tradition. Lapithos knives are indeed pretty ancient; a museum in Stockholm hosts one such knife (actually, it’s more of a lance) that’s 3,000 years old – yet the irony is that, just as Mr. Neoptolemos’ quest to get traditional knife making recognised by Unesco was bearing fruit, the art itself was all but dying out. The old Lapithos knife makers are long gone, confirms George, and none of their children have carried on the tradition. Indeed, knife making as a profession has almost disappeared; he only knows of one other full-time craftsman, a septuagenarian near Paphos who works in a whole other style.
It’s hard to make a living out of knives, sighs George; yet he has his customers. (He also exports, Covid and the Post Office permitting.) “I have regulars – collectors, mostly – who pass by every couple of weeks to see what I’ve made and buy something, or order something”. His wares are also available at the Nicosia flea market on weekends – and tourists also drop in occasionally, which creates some cultural disconnect. “I had an English guy the other day, from Manchester. He came in, chose one of my big folding knives. ‘€30,’ I said.” The tourist frowned; George sighed inwardly, assuming the price was too high – but in fact it was the opposite problem. “‘Only €30, for handmade?’ The guy was worried, thought it might be fake! English, you see – with a Cypriot we’d be like ‘€30, re koumbare?!’ ‘Look, mate, that’s half a day’s work there, and there’s the materials and… okay, fine, make it €25’.” It’s a tough market.
The knives do indeed take about half a day, though he’ll often prep the parts during the week and assemble a dozen or more on the weekend; he’s crafted over 700 in the past year alone, plus occasional special orders for a double-headed Viking axe or a ‘Spartan’ sword as wielded by Leonidas in 300. (The steel often comes from old cars, oddly enough; lift springs and ball bearings from Land Rovers of the 40s and 50s are especially fine, the metal being non-recyclable and therefore harder.) “When I’m home you’ll never find me at home,” he quips, “except when I’m eating or sleeping”. He’s always at his workshop, seven days a week and holidays too; the two weeks in August when the business closes – and most normal people go on vacation – are his most productive time. George Tsiappas is a craftsman obsessed.
What makes him do it? Money, I suppose, is one obvious answer – and it’s true that things are bad, not just for him but small businesses in general. “We’re hanging by a thread,” he proclaims sadly, predicting that Covid will be the last straw for many; 2021 will be “much worse than 2020. You’ll see it from the very first month, when the banks start wanting the instalments on their loans. Surely nine out of 10 people can’t pay at the moment”. The money from 700 knives is presumably a big help in the current climate – but it’s not just that, it’s also the craft itself. An extrovert like him surely enjoys the media attention that comes with being (almost) the last knife maker in Cyprus – not to mention the prestige of being (almost) the sole inheritor of an ancient tradition.
But it’s not just that, either. “You can see I’m a live wire,” says George, “I talk, I gesticulate…” He won’t let his health issues get him down, even when he spends sleepless nights unable to breathe properly, even when his feet are freezing-cold because his heart doesn’t pump enough blood – and the thrill of creating tools from scratch surely helps psychologically, even beyond his lifelong fascination with what he’s creating.
Knives have power. Prehistoric man knew that, modern man (and woman) feels it too – that primeval sense of power – when they hold one in their hand, snug against their palm, primed for action. Making knives has a certain significance, even beyond the process itself – yet the process is satisfying too. Now it’s Christmas Eve, says George happily: this afternoon, and all day Boxing Day and Sunday, he can be in his workshop, sawing and pounding away to his heart’s content. “I might make six or seven – and then, when I finish, I’ll put them on the counter and just admire them for a while.” He smiles, looking forward to the moment: “I’ve made five more, or six more – one more beautiful than the other… I don’t even care if I sell them.” Spoken like a true bladesmith.
