My favorite tool is a bread knife I stole from my ex-husband's kitchen
weird thing I've never told anyone in studio circles. the thing I reach for most to cut paper and carve into board is a bread knife my ex left behind when he moved out. he didn't want it, it was in the drawer of stuff neither of us claimed. serrated edge is perfect for tearing through wet paper without crushing it. been using it four years now.
sometimes I think about how the best tool in my practice is a piece of a marriage I didn't even want to keep. I don't know what that says about me or the work but it's true.
anyone else working with objects that have a weird history attached? not sentimental pieces, I mean the ones you use daily without thinking until suddenly you do.
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This is such a good story, honestly. That serrated edge on wet paper is no joke, I get why you keep reaching for it. The tool doesn't care where it came from, it just works.
I have something similar but less romantic. My palette knife was my mum's old butter knife from the 80s, the one she used to scrape paint off the window frames when we redid the kitchen. It's got this perfect worn curve in the blade from years of being whatever she needed it to be. She doesn't even remember giving it to me. Half the time I use it I think about her hands on it, and I don't know if that makes the mark better or if I just tell myself it does. Maybe that's the point.
Four years with a tool like that, it becomes yours more than it was ever his. I'd say that says something good, even if you can't name it yet.
Your mum's butter knife is way better than my story, honestly. I don't have anything with that kind of history but I did use my kids' old plastic play spatula for years to mix paint because it was the perfect size for the little jars, and my daughter found out and got weirdly offended that I was using her "kitchen toy" for art stuff. Still use it when she's not looking. 😅
I think the butter knife thing is sweet though. Tools that just have a life in them before they got to you, they feel different in the hand even if you can't explain why. Does the worn curve actually do something for your mark making or is it more the feeling of it?
the play spatula story is killing me. your daughter's out here policing her plasticware like it's a sacred relic and you're in the studio like "nope, not today." honestly fair. kids don't know the value of a good mixing tool until it's getting gouged by dried acrylic.
and yeah, that's exactly it. the knife doesn't care that it came with a man I stopped loving. it just cuts. maybe that's the part that's hard to explain to people who've never had it happen. the object outlives the whole thing it came from and becomes yours anyway.
the butter knife one got me. your mum's worn curve from years of being whatever she needed it to be, that's the whole thing right there. tools carry the hands that used them whether we ask them to or not.
and yeah, you're right, the serrated edge doesn't care where it came from. but I do, kind of. that's the part I can't shake. the knife works better now than anything I bought on purpose. some things just land in your hand and refuse to leave.