Vargas Girls by Matt Lerch and Brian Hochstrat

This knife is a project that has been in the works for over a year and in my mind for several years.  I knew I wanted a knife with Vargas Girl engraved images.  The first step was deciding which Vargas Girl images to use, they are below;

The next step was finding the right engraver for the project. I approached Brian Hochstrat.  Brian has done several other pieces for me.  He was excited by the idea so I knew I had the right engraver.  Finding the right knife to provide a canvas for the images was quite a challenge.  Brian and I discussed several knifemakers.  Matt Lerch's name came up.  Matt is a good friend of mine.  Brian had long wanted to work on one of Matt's knives.  I contacted Matt and he liked the project idea also.  We discussed the appropriate knife, Matt's Paia Dagger was it.  It was great fun working with Matt and Brian to make everything work together and I am more than pleased with the result which is shown below in this professional photograph by Buddy Thomason.

Here are some comments from Brian about the engraving; 
All the colors are inlayed metals. The yellow is obviously yellow gold, but the rest of the colors are not as self explanatory. the gray fluff on hat girls dress is palladium, the rest of the colors are all gold alloys, pink and green are standard alloy colors, but the skin tone gold is a custom alloy that I came up with for that specific use. Also the girls hair is a japanese alloy that I mixed called shakudo, which is a low karat mix of copper and gold, which creates a patina that is richer than what standard copper will produce. The scroll work is art nouveau, aka liberty scroll. The girls as you know are reproductions of Alberto Vargas, but are adapted to better fit the area provided on the knife. If you compare the engraving to the original artwork you can see the elongation of the girls in the engraving, which ads to their feminine quality and makes better use of the space the knife had to offer.

Here are pictures that I took;