About me

Who I am

My name is Ivan Campos. I was born in 1974, and lived most of my life in Tatuí, a nice little town near São Paulo, wich is also known as the Music Capital due to its famous music school (on wich I never studied besides living two blocks away from it – what a shame!!!).

I am a full time knifemaker and have been working with knives sice 1993, first as a dealer, and started making my own blades professionally in 2000. I have also worked on many other activities, what has given me a varied backround – I am a certified TTI (real estate agent) by trade and have also ran several retail and wolesale business, an import/export business and also several activities relaed to knifemaking. I am single and spend most of my free time sharing a beer with friends at the pub I recently opened in downtown, reading and taking care of my several dogs – all homeless dogs that ended up at home one way or another.

My phylosophy towards knifemaking

I was very fortunate to have been a friend of Mr. Bide for many years until his death, in 2008. He was your very  typical old-time town´s blacksmith and would make or fix most anything in his shop, including things that made absolutelly no sense fixing nowadays, just not to let people down. He also made knives – and was probably the last old-time smith making the style called Sorocabana knife, the typical knife of my region. He wouldn´t care much about finish and had a serious interest in making knives that were working tools and would satisfy their users, and doing things this way he made his customers happy and was happy, too.

Why am I telling you this? Because I think the time I have spent with him has made a deep impression on me, even though I haven´t realized that back them, and, although I work on a different style, I see myself looking for the same characteristics in my work – to make a simple, functional knife that makes its user and me happy – and let me tell you: the old man´s recipe is working fine!

The  knives I make are robust and affordale, and this is a fine combination of caracteristics for tools that will see use in the real world – and knowing that they will be used is a great motivator for me to keep making them as good as I can and keep trying to improve in a way or another each new knife I make.

The way I see life

“Life is a journey, not a destination” – as beaten as it may sound, this couldn´t be more true and I really want to be able to look back and see the positive impact my life has had for the poeple I met and the places I have been, when my time comes. I will not change the world but I will strive to make a positive difference in it, as small as it may be, and by trying to act  this way I know I am constantly moving towards becoming a better and happier person. I have been asked once if making fighters isn´t going against my phylosophy and my answer to this is that it is not the knife, but the hand holding it that will decide if it will be used for good or evil deeds, and rather than going through some endless phylosophical controversy, I´d rather remember the old Irish saying: “You don´t give a sword to a man who can not dance”.

By now you have had enough rambing for the week, so better go see some knives!