George Wostenholm I*XL Limited Edition Horsehead Bowie Knife 48/100

Wostenholm produced highly coveted, limited-edition numbered Bowie knives during the mid-to-late 20th century. The most famous of these documented series is the “Last Bowie” edition of 1971.

The company produced a strict run of exactly 100 pieces to commemorate the end of an era right before George Wostenholm & Son merged with Joseph Rodgers & Sons in November 1971. These knives featured a broad 10-inch clip-point blade, traditional embellishments, and a serialized stamp out of 100 on the blade or ricasso.

The Story of the Craftsman

The story you heard about a dedicated, long-time worker holding the line on these traditional builds is deeply rooted in the history of Sheffield’s twilight era of knife-making.

During the mid-20th century, mass production and foreign imports decimated the traditional Sheffield industry. To pull off these premium, limited numbered editions, Wostenholm relied on the last remaining traditional Master Cutlers and “Little Mesters” left in the factory—men who possessed the multi-decade experience required to hand-forge, grind, workback, and assemble a classic 19th-century style Bowie from start to finish.

While many individual factory workers’ names went unrecorded on standard production sheets, the pre-eminent figure of this exact era was the legendary master cutler Stan Shaw (1926–2021). Shaw famously worked for George Wostenholm (among a few other historic Sheffield firms) during this precise late-factory period, keeping the intricate hand-crafting techniques alive before eventually establishing his own independent workshop as the city’s celebrated “last little mester”.