Idaho man creates the holy grail of knives at his ranch in Midvale

He almost blushes as he pulls out the knife he keeps in his jeans pocket — a folding knife purchased through a mail-order catalog for $20. “I can’t keep a knife,” Dwight Towell says with a sheepish grin. “Every time I make a knife for myself, somebody wants to buy it.” That’s about as close as he comes to boasting. He’d never say so, but Towell is one of the top knifemakers in the world. Collectors pay thousands for the handmade knives that come from the austere little shop on his Midvale ranch. The current wait for a Dwight Towell custom knife: five to six years. A recipient of this year’s Governor’s Awards in the Arts, Towell is no stranger to prizes. They include the American Knifemakers Guild’s top award and the Beretta Award for outstanding achievement in cutlery. A Towell dagger engraved with gold on blued steel graced the cover of a brochure for the Art Knife Invitational in San Diego, to which only the world’s top knifemakers are invited. It sold for $12,800. “Dwight, quite simply, is one of the half dozen finest knifemakers in the world, and since there can be no fine art without craft, an incredibly talented artist by any measure,” said Cort Conley of the Idaho Commission on the Arts. “That he could manage this while being an admirable husband, father and rancher humbles most everyone who knows him.” The Towells have ranched in the Midvale area since his great grandfather, Alexander Towell, homesteaded there in 1881. As a boy, Dwight Towell “always had a knife. I was always whittling or carving my initials in something.”...more