Imperial Three-Blade Stockman Pocket Knife, Crown Shield, Imitation Stag Scales, Providence Rhode Island, c. 1950s–1970s

The Piece

A three-blade folding pocket knife with a clip-point main blade, a spear secondary, and a third blade seated in the same frame. The scales are moulded in imitation stag — deep brown and cream, cut with the ragged vertical channels of a real antler — over Imperial's stamped shell construction, with polished nickel-silver bolsters at both ends. Set into the front scale is the small round crown medallion that was Imperial's signature: a pebbled ground with a raised crown at the center. The main blade tang reads Imperial Stainless U.S.A.; the second blade carries the same mark. Blades are bright with light scattered pitting, and all three still snap.

History & Provenance

Imperial's story begins with two brothers from Frosolone, in the Italian Molise. Felix and Michael Mirando emigrated to Providence, Rhode Island in 1916 to be near its jewelry industry, where they began making skeletons for pocket-watch chain knives; with their friend Domenic Fazzano as manager they founded the Imperial Knife Company, which would grow to become the largest knife manufacturer in the United States. The firm's method was its advantage — stamped shell handles and moulded scales let Imperial put a working three-blade knife in a hardware store for pocket change while Sheffield and Solingen charged a week's wages. Wikipedia

The company later consolidated with the Schrade Cutlery Company, founded 1904, into Imperial Schrade, which manufactured in the United States and Ireland and sold through hardware stores, department stores, and on military bases before entering bankruptcy in 2004. The Imperial Stainless U.S.A. tang stamp with the crown shield belongs to the postwar decades, when these were the knives American men actually carried. Wikipedia

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Three blades in a frame the size of a finger, made by two immigrant brothers who built the biggest cutlery company in the country out of a Providence jewelry shop. It costs less than dinner and it still opens with a snap. Put it in a tray with your keys, hand it to someone's kid, or keep it in the drawer where the useful things live — this is the knife your grandfather actually had, not the one collectors put behind glass.

Condition notes: Light pitting and staining to blade flats. Scales sound with no cracks or lifting. All three blades open and close with positive snap. Blade edges show sharpening; not factory edge. Nickel bolsters with light scratching.