Joe Kious
Kerrville, Texas · 1950–2015
Joe Kious made automatics the way a watchmaker makes movements — hidden complexity behind a surface that gives nothing away. The deployment button on this knife is in the Damascus bolster. You have to know where it is. If you don’t, it looks like a bolster. That was the point.
He started in Kerrville, Texas in the early 1980s and spent three decades refining a single idea: that an automatic knife could be a precision instrument and an art object simultaneously. His Damascus autos are among the most collected custom knives in the world. The fit is absolute. The finish is surgical. The file-worked spine is a vanity that only another maker would notice, which is exactly why he did it.
He died in 2015. The number of Kious Damascus autos in existence is fixed and not large.
The deployment button is in the Damascus. If you can find it, you deserve to push it.
