(Editor’s Note: This article appears in the October 2026 issue of KNIFE Magazine. However, we are very excited about it, and wanted to share the whole thing here in these digital pages. Like what you see? You can read the entire issue, and every issue of KNIFE and Knife World in our 50 year archive with a Premium Online Membership. Click Here to join today)
Reborn: Little Valley’s Giant Knife and Fork are back in a Big Way
by Mark D. Zalesky
Most of you have seen the historic image before, a young man standing next to a gigantic knife and fork that stretches beyond the wall of the photographer’s studio. In recent years it has appeared in ads for the Village of Knives Show, held each July in Little Valley, New York.
The man is Tint Champlin, the son of Cattaraugus Cutlery founder J.B.F. Champlin, and the giant knife and fork were displayed as an eye-catching item at exhibitions where Cattaraugus was showing the company’s wares. They have their own unique story, which begins a decade before the founding of Cattaraugus and continues right up to the present day – but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The history of Cattaraugus Cutlery is well known: J.B.F. Champlin launched his cutlery career working for New York City importers Friedmann & Lauterjung. Eventually he left their employment, moved to the railway-connected town of Little Valley in the far western end of New York state, and in late 1882 or early 1883 established a new cutlery importing company under his own name. In late 1885 or early 1886 it became J.B.F. Champlin & Son – the ‘son’ was that young man in the photo – and in early 1887 the name was changed to Cattaraugus Cutlery Co., “Cattaraugus” being the name of the county in which Little Valley was situated. Cattaraugus remained an importing firm until Champlin purchased the defunct Beaver Falls Cutlery Co. of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania in July of 1890, moving their equipment to Mill Street in Little Valley and creating the very first cutlery manufacturing plant in what would become the “Village of Knives.”
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