Animal Materials

• Knives are the items most likely to have handmade handles, but handles for forks, spoons and other kinds of flatware can be handmade as well. Horn and antler handles are popular among hunters for their connection with the outdoors, as are those made of wild animal tusks, mammoth and mastodon ivory, and ivory legally sold before 1989, when the sale of elephant ivory was banned. Other materials from animals used in handmade cutlery handles include elk “ivory,” which comes from the elk’s teeth, water buffalo and ram’s horns, and bone.
  
  

Hardwoods

• Hardwoods are another popular choice for handmade handles. These woods are generally dense and can be carved to an exact design. Woods including ironwood, blackwood, ebony, rosewood, maple, purpleheart and American walnut are all favored for their beautiful coloration by woodworkers who make cutlery handles. Woods can also be stained to desired colors, and will deepen in color over time and with use. Wood is easier to carve into customized shapes than some animal products, and can be customized to include an aesthetic design or to orthopedically fit an individual hand.
  
  

Decorating Handmade Handles

• Handmade handles can be decorated through scrimshaw (a kind of engraving), with the addition of gems or metals, and with inlays. Scrimshaw, drawing and inking on bone, is common to handmade handles, and was a popular pastime in the 19th century, especially among sailors and military personnel. Gems and metal designs can be fixed to the crosspiece or butt of a handle without interfering in the use of the tool, and inlays, including precious metal wire, mother-of-pearl, and other materials, are set into the surface of a handle, flush with the primary material. Commemorative coins, pins and even fossils can be set into the handle of a handmade piece of cutlery.
  
  

Delicate Crafting

• While most handmade cutlery items tend to be hunting knives and other large tools, they can be made on a smaller and more delicate scale. Pearl-handled forks for snails and small oysters, long-handled iced-tea spoons with bamboo handles, silver butter knives and measuring spoons have all been handmade over the past century, as well as non-edged serving ware such as horn tankards and pourers, bone, horn or ivory caviar spoons, and saltcellars made from acorns.