The Coffin and Slipjoint combination carries about 350 years of pocketknife history in a 2-ounce package. The slipjoint mechanism showed up in England around the mid-1600s. Scholars and merchants used these small folders to trim quill pens, which is where the word “penknife” comes from.
Sheffield, England, turned it into an industry. Large-scale cutlery production there was underway by 1700, and the backspring stayed the dominant folding-knife design for the next three centuries. Classic patterns like the Barlow date from that era.
The coffin shape has its own lineage. The coffin jack is thought to be one of the earliest jack-knife patterns, a Sheffield design from the mid-1800s. Some collectors also call it a crown jack. The same tapered-at-both-ends profile shows up on frontier-era Bowie knives, where the handle pins earned the nickname “coffin nails”. The shape stuck around because it works: the swell fills your palm, and the taper locks your hand in place.
American cutlers ran with the slipjoint from the 1850s into the early 1900s, naming dozens of patterns along the way. Böker has been part of that story since 1869, building knives under its tree-brand mark in Solingen, Germany’s “City of Blades.” So this knife is a fitting full circle: a 19th-century English pattern, redrawn by an American custom maker, and built in Germany with 21st-century steel.
The pattern is also having a moment. Strict knife laws in many places have pushed people back toward non-locking slipjoints, and makers are pairing the old mechanics with modern materials like MagnaCut and Micarta. This Coffin is a good example of that revival.