Under the title “Knives from Albacete, Treasures of three centuries”, the Municipal Museum of Knives offered a temporary exhibition that showed knives, poniards,  daggers and push daggers date from the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th centuries, made by artisans from Albacete. All of them are real treasures that were ceded by different collectors.

This exhibition was possible thanks to the contribution of the small and yet so great treasures of these passionate people –Albacete’s knives lovers – who have dedicated and dedicate much of their lives to the search for that unique knife so essential in their always incomplete collections. Thanks to them, the push daggers, daggers, poniards and knives that were gathered in the temporary exhibition halls of the Municipal Museum of Knives – after decades and even centuries outside their place of origin – returned to the city where they were forged and created by craftsmen from Albacete. All these works could leave for a while the drawers and showcases, so that once again the richness of their blades and handles could be object of admiration, as they were centuries ago, in some shelf or window of a knife making workshop in Albacete.

On the other hand, for the first time, this exhibition counted on the invaluable collaboration of the National Archaeological Museum (Madrid) and the Museum of Albacete. Both institutions lent various Albacete knives of great relevance.

The first news about the Albacete’s knife making dates back to the 16^th century. In the seventeenth century we find 64 knife making artisans – according to researcher Rafael Martínez del Peral – in a population of less than 5,000 inhabitants.
In the eighteenth century, although the documentary references indicate that the knife making activity does not seem to be still prominent in the city, the pieces that have survived to this day show that this activity was important.

Moreover, Albacete is already recognized abroad as one of the most outstanding knife making populations in Spain with at least 80 knife making artisans at the moment working in the city, concentrated in the streets called “Zapateros”, “San Agustín” or “Feria”.

In the nineteenth century Albacete is going to be known, without any doubt, as an eminently knife making population. In this century the production remains entirely artisan and, it was not until the twentieth century, when the industrial process is developed completely influenced by the French and German knife making industries.