By Porter Lang
Start with the word. Wikipedia says navaja comes from the Latin novacula, a razor. That tells you the word is old, even if the object, as we know it, is not. The knife is a folding knife with a blade that locks open, and Spain has a whole vocabulary for the variations.
Where it started
Wikipedia says the earliest navajas appeared in Andalusia in the late 1600s. By the early eighteenth century, the same article says, a lock had appeared. Our reading: a lock matters on a folding knife, because without one the blade can close on the fingers. A mechanism for that appears in the article around the early eighteenth century, and we leave the exact year out, as the source does.
An edict of 1750 is also listed by Wikipedia. We do not describe what it ordered, because the text we read does not state it in a way we can repeat safely. We give the date as a date in the record and nothing more.
Around 1850, the article says, a pull ring was added. We have not seen the article describe how it works, so we do not.
Where the steel came from
Wikipedia says Albacete, Santa Cruz de Mudela and Toledo supplied carbon-steel blades. These are three places with a tradition of cutlery, and the article lists them together without ranking them. Carbon steel takes a sharp edge and also marks with rust if you leave it wet. That second point is general knowledge about the metal and not from the article, so we mark it as our reading and not as a sourced fact.
Handles, the article adds, were made from a number of materials. We do not list them, because the summary we read did not name each one reliably. A buyer should ask a maker what a handle is made of and not assume.
The types
A museum typology page gives names for three types: the Albaceteña, the Sevillana and the Ring Lock. The page was written by Alejandro Expósito Fernández and is dated 1985. It also says that regulations in the late nineteenth century led to a type with a cut tip, and the page calls that the Cut Tip type. Our reading: the cut tip was a change to the blade’s shape, and the regulations were the reason. The page appears to say so, though we have not seen the regulation itself.
We have deliberately left out the fighting uses and the stories that come with them. Those are real parts of the history, but they are not what this site is about. The site is about what a thing is made of and where.
Dates in order
- Late 1600s: earliest navajas, in Andalusia, according to Wikipedia.
- Early eighteenth century: a lock appears, according to Wikipedia.
- 1750: an edict is recorded, according to Wikipedia.
- About 1850: pull ring, according to Wikipedia.
- Late nineteenth century: regulations lead to the Cut Tip type, according to the museum page.
- 1985: the date on the typology page, according to the museum page.
Side by side
Wikipedia gives a chronology and a list of steel-producing towns. The museum page gives names for types and a reason for one of them. They do not contradict each other, and they do not cover the same ground. One tells you when, the other tells you which. Put together, they give a buyer a timeline from the late 1600s to the late 1800s, three named places for the steel, and four named types. Beyond that, the record in our sources runs out, and we have not filled the gap.
What kind of sources these are
Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia anyone can edit. The museum typology page is a catalogue entry by a named author and is closer to a specialist source, though we have only read the part that was accessible. Neither is a maker’s own account. A maker’s description of how a blade is forged and tempered would be the next thing to find.
What the sources do not say
They do not tell us who makes navajas in Albacete today. We have not named any maker, and we will not until a source names one. They do not give blade lengths, and we leave out any numbers on size. They do not give prices, and we leave those out too.
Questions a buyer would ask
Plain questions come with any folding knife, and the sources do not answer them. What is the handle made of, and was it cut from a natural material or moulded? Is the blade carbon steel, as the Albacete tradition in Wikipedia suggests, or stainless? Does it have a pull ring, the feature the article dates to about 1850, or a plain nail nick? Which of the museum’s named types is it closest to: the Albaceteña, the Sevillana, the Ring Lock or the Cut Tip? A maker who can answer those four questions in a sentence each is describing a real object. A maker who cannot is selling a shape.
Care, in general terms
Carbon steel, as we said, can mark with rust. That is general knowledge about the metal and is marked as our reading. We have not found a maker’s care instructions in our sources, so we give none. A curator should ask the maker for them and pass them on word for word.
What we left out
The violence, as we said. The laws on carrying knives, because they are legal advice by another name and they change. The dates of individual workshops, because the sources did not give them.
Roam first. Shop later.