Alessandra De Santis Unleashes Latest Mythological Folder

Alessandra De Santis of Hydra Design is back with her latest Boker Plus collaboration piece. This is the Kirke, a tactical-practical folder with lots of enthusiast-friendly touches.

One very cool element of De Santis’s work in general is its connection with Greek mythology. The Hydra, of course, needs no introduction, but “Kirke” may be less familiar. More commonly spelled “Circe” (in North America, at least), Kirke/Circe was a goddess of magic who trapped Odysseus and his men on her island for a time; she also transformed his soldiers into pigs in one of those (many) scenes in The Odyssey etched permanently into the Western consciousness. Circe is also sometimes believed to be the daughter of Hecate, another Greek goddess, after which De Santis named her first production fixed blade.

For those of us on less dangerous, modern odysseys, the Kirke’s 3.39-inch blade should be right on the money in terms of preferred everyday carry length. The blade shape is a gently modified wharncliffe, canted upwards just enough to give the main edge a light, but meaningful, curvature. Opened with a flipper, this modified wharnie comes made from Nitro-V steel, always a welcome face in the sub-$100 knife genre. Nitro-V often draws comparison with AEB-L, with which it shares many compositional characteristics and a general performance profile as a well-rounded, highly stain resistant recipe.

De Santis kept the Kirke’s handle profile quite tame: there’s a mild finger groove beneath the guard, but beyond that this folder does not insist on how it must be held, allowing the user to determine the grip best suited to the present task. We have black G-10 scales, with some broad topographical sculpting done to both front and back slabs; and on the show side scale you can see the button lock, another recurring trope at Boker lately (and the industry at large, really). Accent pieces – the off-side pivot collar and backspacer – are made from a sea-gray/light blue G-10. The Kirke weighs 3.53 oz.

This one is available now.

Knife in Featured Image: Boker Plus Kirke

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