Knifemaker Greg Lightfoot

• We wish to provide the kind of organized assistance and encouragement that will prevent the new maker from falling victim to the frustration of isolation and a lack of informed guidance. If we fail to recognize that we were all there once, we run the risk of losing them forever. We wish to increase public awareness of knifemakers, not as makers of weapons, but as skilled and versatile craftspeople producing high quality implements which happen to be knives.
• Potters, jewellers, glassblowers etc. band together to stage shows. As an individual discipline only knifemakers can put two hundred artisans together with a thousand buyers and do it time after time all over North America —-and yet we are virtually invisible to the general public.
• We wish to provide, through our Newsletters, a forum for the exchange of techniques and ideas between all makers so that in a sharing atmosphere we can all grow to our full potential.
• We wish to create a uniform code of ethics and standards so that a buyer can deal with our members on a level field. He will know that the overall quality of workmanship will be predictable and that he will have recourse to the Guild should something go wrong.
• We wish to create a national database of knifemakers and their individual skills to assist the public in achieving a perfect client/artisan match.
• We wish to host an Annual show that is exclusive to handmade knives and closely related items. We wish to host an Annual show that is almost exclusive to handmade knives and closely related items including factory knives and antique knives (the later two at the discretion of the Board of Directors).

This Is Why We Are.