All About Pocket Knives

Added this one to the collection the other day.
Rich. A. Herder Gentleman's Knife

A good one outcast. Very cool cigar cutter. Mine are all metal. Cool handles.

"Gent's knife" is a term used for small, slender, pen or lobster knives, often with metal handles and with a manicure blade that a 'gentleman' might carry in his pocket to the office or church, etc.
Your knife is a 2 blade Jack. Many or even most, older German jacks have a corkscrew which is not the case for USA or British jacks.
kj

kootenay joe wrote: ↑Fri Apr 09, 2021 8:19 am "Gent's knife" is a term used for small, slender, pen or lobster knives, often with metal handles and with a manicure blade that a 'gentleman' might carry in his pocket to the office or church, etc.
Your knife is a 2 blade Jack. Many or even most, older German jacks have a corkscrew which is not the case for USA or British jacks.
kj

Come on Joe you should know I know knives and I know what a traditional gentleman's knife looks like, but in my eyes I see this as a gentleman's knife. Corkscrew would lean most to calling it a gunstock bartenders, but I see a distinguished chap sitting around with buds sipping brandy and pulling this out clips his cigar. Hence a gentleman's knife

I mean really nowhere does it say a gentleman files his nails, clips his nose hairs and needs a button hook does it. . Then again it doesn't say they sit and drink and smoke either.

outkast wrote: ↑Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:06 pm

kootenay joe wrote: ↑Fri Apr 09, 2021 8:19 am "Gent's knife" is a term used for small, slender, pen or lobster knives, often with metal handles and with a manicure blade that a 'gentleman' might carry in his pocket to the office or church, etc.
Your knife is a 2 blade Jack. Many or even most, older German jacks have a corkscrew which is not the case for USA or British jacks.
kj

Come on Joe you should know I know knives and I know what a traditional gentleman's knife looks like, but in my eyes I see this as a gentleman's knife. Corkscrew would lean most to calling it a gunstock bartenders, but I see a distinguished chap sitting around with buds sipping brandy and pulling this out clips his cigar. Hence a gentleman's knife

I think it is important for knife collectors to use pattern names accurately otherwise we soon would not know what type of knife is being discussed. But not all collectors like a formal classification.
To me it is a Gunstock Jack with a cigar cutter which makes it somewhat special from other Gunstock Jacks. The corkscrew is not so 'special' as it is very common on many older German knives.
In earlier times a "gentleman" did keep his hands and fingernails clean and trimmed as this differentiated him from a 'laborer'.
My father who was born in Britain in 1909 was very concerned with how his hands looked because back then the British class system meant a middle class person never wanted to be thought of as a laborer which was considered 'lower class'.
kj

Very nice old German folder which was certainly fit for a gentleman.
The Richard Herder cutlery company never had the presence in the United States that Friedrich Herder did.
But R. Herder knives were certainly on par with F. Herder knives, which ranked among the best cutlery in Solingen, Germany, in the 19th and 20th centuries. The OP model shown is an early example and is seen below in a Richard Herder factory catalog from c. 1920.