Paul Jarvis
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Paul Jarvis was born in 1962 and resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Making knives since he was thirteen years old, he sold his first knife at the age of fifteen. His unique talents arise from an inner passion to create beautiful objects and he has chosen knives and jewelry to do this. Paul started his apprenticeship as a mechanic during his second year at high school working for a company that manufactured laboratory equipment and dealt with material failure analysis. There he was involved in designing and making one-of-a-kind jigs and fixtures, using accurate machining tools and a variety of materials. |
| Twenty years later he began working for a company that sold industrial supplies, running their machine shop and, again, doing mostly one-of-a-kind highly specialized creative jobs. Never having worked under any mentor, Paul is completely self-taught, influenced mainly by 18th-century Japanese metal artists as well as 17th- and 18th-century European craftsmen. His art also shows the influence of ancient Greek and classical Roman designs. His specialty is high relief carving, sculpting and background texturing using only hammers, chisels, punches and files. Sculpting his animal figures in gold or silver usually takes him many weeks of delicate carving. Gold, silver, bronze, exotic woods and various gems are his materials of choice. He tends to seek out rare materials for his unique pieces, making each one a very special and original work of art. Paul does his art after work hours, every spare moment he has. Some of his knives may therefore take weeks or even many months to complete, ending up as extraordinary one-of-a-kind masterpieces. He usually makes no more than ten knives per year. |
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