Sun, 8 November 2009
A century and a quarter after a cutler set out to supply Swiss soldiers with a survival tool, the Swiss Army knife adapts to the urban jungle.
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Our blogger Kerrin learns that there’s a Swiss Army Knife for every purpose at an exhibit in Schwyz.When you walk into a kitchen supply store, sometimes the sheer variety of tools can make your head spin. Each one designed for a particular food or purpose - a spoon to scoop out your avocado, a different one for your kiwi, a special knife to carve your pineapple and yet another one to hull your strawberries. For me, the best (worst?) example was a peanut butter spoon I once saw in New York City! Really, a spoon just for peanut butter. Need I say more?
What I learned in Schwyz a few weeks ago is that this concept is not new. With the 125-year anniversary of Victorinox, a special exhibit that began mid-May at the Forum of Swiss History in the town of Schwyz, about an hour away from Zürich by public transportation. The Swiss Army Knife as an icon exhibit not only lets you trace the evolution of the famous red pocket knife with the immediately recognisable emblem, but you can also trace the history of the knife as a tool, even including some examples from the Roman era. The collection on display is truly impressive. When I asked the lady at the museum how many knives they had in total, her eyes grew large and she laughed, as if I had asked her how many people in the world have a Swiss Army Knife?! 
To each his own - and by that I mean his own knife: a knife for the architect, the mohel (to perform Jewish circumcisions), the flint-striker, the juggler, the kosher butcher, the hunter and the horseman - his knife the one with the hoof scraper, but of course. A knife for every sized hand too - the smallest measuring just 2 millimetres, and the largest having 314 blades, giving it a place in the 1992 Guinness Book of World Records. Overall, the exhibit spanned time periods, countries, professions and cultures too.
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