Anthony Bourdain was enraptured with a knife. It was crafted for him in 2016 by Bob Kramer, a "rockstar" of knife-making, as Bourdain, a rockstar in his own right, called him, and it was influenced by Samurai sword-making and the literal stars—the iron used to form it was harvested from meteorites. There was mythology surrounding that knife, and there remains prestige, as it currently sits up for sale, the big-ticket item at the center of an auction of Bourdain's estate that closes Wednesday. The current bid for it is $50,000. More than a year after he died, the knife, alongside many little pieces of Anthony Bourdain's life, will be scattered around the world.

In this auction of 202 things that Bourdain owned, there’s art like a Ralph Steadman illustration—to two chefs, one slicing up rat guts and the other wasted—that the artist inscribed to Bourdain, and a print by Brad Phillips that reads "Eat, Pray, Get the Fuck Out." There’s clothing he wore, like a Navy jacket with a crossed knives patch commemorating the evacuation of his film crew from Beirut, Lebanon aboard the USS Nashville after rockets and war exploded there in 2006. There are Rolex watches, Tom Ford suits, and Persol Steve McQueen sunglasses—the man was stylish. There are mundane things too, like a dated collection of DVDs (Requiem for a Dream, The Wire, La Dolce Vita) and old vinyls (The Kinks, The Velvet Underground, The Beatles).

Bourdain's Bob Kramer meteorite knife is presented with a sheath, carrying case, and certificate of authenticity at the auction. iGavel

But it’s that knife that everyone’s eyeing—"the most awesome knife in the world," as Bourdain once said of Kramer’s craft. It was the result of hours of melting and grinding and hammering and cooling in a boiling hot metalworking shop, a punishingly difficult chemistry experiment that really only Kramer can do that spits out a piece of art with culinary function. Of course Bourdain would love it.

Bob Kramer met Bourdain for the first time in 2015 at an awards ceremony hosted by The Balvenie at Le Bernardin in New York. He, Kramer, was being awarded a fellowship by the American Craft Council for his knife-making skills, and Bourdain, owner of a keen eye for craftsmanship, was doing the awarding. Kramer describes himself as a "bumbling idiot"—"I’d always been a huge fan of everything he had done essentially, except the heroin," he told me in a recent phone conversation—while Bourdain was "incredibly gracious." They chatted about sharp objects and drank scotch, and a few months later, Bourdain was in Kramer’s steel-working shop north of Seattle to film an episode of Raw Craft, the branded show he made with The Balvenie about craftspeople in America.

Bourdain and Kramer film an episode of Raw Craft in 2015. Months later, Kramer made Bourdain his own meteorite knife. Screengrab/iGavel Auctions

A Bob Kramer knife is a thing to behold, with waves of carbon exploding across the blade, and at the time, Kramer was obsessed with using meteorites, which are crashing into the ground in such plentiful numbers that "you can go to eBay and buy meteorites all day long," he insists. (It’s true.)

"You know, if somebody stabbed you to death with that knife—and that would be wrong, I hasten to say—that knife's so beautiful you couldn't help but say, 'That's a really amazing looking knife,'" Bourdain commented while they filmed, before putting one to the test to chop chives right there in the shop.

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Bourdain never asked for a custom Bob Kramer knife outright, not at the awards ceremony nor while filming the Raw Craft episode; that wouldn’t have been his style, to presume his celebrity would get him special treatment. Nor would Kramer have gifted him one—to get a Kramer knife means waiting on a long list for your name to be selected, then forking over a great deal of cash when it does. That, or buying one at auction, where a meteorite knife might go for as much as $15,000, Kramer says. But he told Bourdain off camera that he could let him know if a spot opened up.

"I just think he understood from working in kitchens what it’s like to make things with your hands for a living," Kramer says. "And, I think he also understood from a restaurant point-of-view—just because some big shot walks in the front door doesn’t mean you’re going to bump a reservation. It’s just not cool."

"I just think he understood from working in kitchens what it’s like to make things with your hands for a living."

Months later, that spot opened up, and Bourdain jumped at the opportunity, giving Kramer no other instruction but to "do your thing." It took Kramer about two weeks to make the 10-inch steel chef’s knife from meteorite, but only a fraction of that was spent choosing the wood for the handle and sheath: a traditional, durable cocobolo.

"I know he was going to use it. It wasn’t going to be a precious thing that sat in a case, so that influences the wood choice," Kramer says. "I just had a vibe for the guy from watching him on TV and how he would dress. He wore this leather jacket that I always really dug, but you know, it looked really broken in, and he liked older stuff with some quality. So all of that was rolling through my head as I looked around the wood room." (Two leather jackets of Bourdain’s, both well-worn, are included in the auction.)

Bourdain paid $5,000 for the finished knife. Kramer remembers him saying something like, "Oh god, I’m going to have to work brunches again," when he handed over the check. But therein lies the one exception Kramer says he made for the guy: No one has ever been able to buy a Bob Kramer meteorite knife at a fixed price. All of them go at auction for two to three times what Bourdain paid.

Illustrator Ralph Steadman appeared on the London episode of Parts Unknown. He inscribed this artist’s proof to Bourdain. iGavel Auctions

Kramer delivered it to Bourdain at that same American Craft Council awards ceremony held the following April 2016 as the two men stood in front of a bar, crowded around by people three-deep. "We’re pressed up against the bar, so he’s got this big ass chef’s knife, he’s kind of waving it around. He’s smiling, I’m smiling. He’s like, 'Oh man, it feels amazing,'" Kramer recalls. "Then he put it away. It was the right thing to do—people drinking booze, we’re in a bar, put the bloody knife away."

"He was very passionate about that knife, because Anthony loved craftsmanship," Eric Ripert, Michelin-starred chef at Le Bernardin and best friend of Bourdain, told me a week and a half ago, as the price of that knife creeped up past four times what Bourdain originally paid. "He had an obsession with craftsmanship, and as you know, those knives take a long time... The metal is special, the wood is special, the craftsmanship is special, the [engraving] of the blade, everything."

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Bourdain posted a photo of the knife two days later on Instagram, writing: "Behold! It took years of waiting...I plan on just sitting here gazing at it for a few days before taking it out for a drive."

No one got excited about something like Anthony Bourdain. He had a seemingly unending supply of enthusiasm that he generously poured into his pursuits, be they his horror comics or TV shows or books. He gushed to Kramer when they met up again in Seattle in late 2016 about the black-and-white episode of No Reservations he had filmed in Rome in the style of Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita. "He’s just jacked, you know? He’s like a 16-year-old kid with a new motorcycle," Kramer remembers. He got into duck gore: Also included in the auction is a duck press, a fabulously extravagant piece of machinery that quite literally presses blood out of roasted duck carcass to be made into sauce. Bourdain once wrote that seeing one in action made him "practically weep...like watching Joe DiMaggio playing his last game," so he picked up his own while filming The Layover in Paris. "He thought it was a marvel," Ripert says. "It’s made of silver and it’s a beautiful object, but also he liked the idea of having the bones of the ducks cracked."

The duck press that Bourdain picked up in Paris. At the time, he called it "the most medieval of all kitchen tools." iGavel Auction

Bourdain loved to write, and some of his early musings are in the auction as well, including the original, typewritten idea for Kitchen Confidential, which starts, "Kitchen Confidential is not a secret society for hungry prying eyes...although in the words of its ringleader Anthony Bourdain, it is, 'a conspiracy.'" Of his writings, Ripert simply says, "We can say Anthony was the Hemingway of the food world, except the fact that Anthony doesn’t need any comparison with any writer. He was Anthony Bourdain."

"We can say Anthony was the Hemingway of the food world, except the fact that Anthony doesn’t need any comparison with any writer."

And so while auctioning off his belongings leans morbid, not a bit lessening the scar left by his death, it’s still a chance to buy a token of that enthusiasm. Besides, when all the final prices for pieces of Bourdain’s life on auction are tallied up, 60 percent of the proceeds will go to his daughter and estranged wife, and 40 percent will go to a scholarship in Bourdain’s name at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), where he learned to wield a chef’s knife, and where he posed just like he did on the cover on Kitchen Confidential (sans knife) to have his photo taken for his graduation in ‘78.

Back at the CIA a week and a half before the auction closed, Ripert spoke to students alongside José Andrés, the celebrity-chef-slash-humanitarian, and CIA president Tim Ryan, to continue the work they started in April for #BourdainDay: focusing on Bourdain’s legacy, his friendship, and his incredible gift for storytelling.

Tim Ryan (left), Eric Ripert, and José Andrés pose with a new plaque honoring Bourdain at the CIA earlier this month. The Culinary Institute of America

"It’s important to know that he’s no longer with us, but it’s more important to know what he has done and the impact that he had on society," Ripert told me that day, after CIA dedicated a hall to Bourdain—named Les Halles D’Anthony Bourdain after Bourdain’s stint at Brasserie Les Halles restaurant in New York and the legendary food market in old Paris called Les Halles—and the three men regaled a theater full of ambitious young chefs-in-training with stories of Bourdain’s talent and humor. The time Bourdain got Ripert’s Wikipedia page to read "French surrender monkey." When Bourdain filmed an excruciating clip of Andrés zipping himself into a skintight wetsuit to hunt for gooseneck barnacles in the freezing cold ocean off Spain’s Northern coast on Parts Unknown.

(When Ryan told the CIA students that a chef’s knife was at that moment going for more than $20K at the auction, that got many laughs as well, albeit of the incredulous nature.)

"I want to remind everyone here we all need those friends next to us," Andrés told the audience on a more somber note.

Bourdain wears his USS Nashville jacket, which he received years after being evacuated from Beirut by the U.S. Navy. iGavel Auctions Getty Images

Imagine a meteorite burning up the atmosphere, Kramer councils me as he talks about his meteorite steel knives. Imagine seeing it streak through the sky, out of sight, and then hearing its sonic boom. Imagine finding that meteorite and feelings its magic. Kramer talks of Indonesian empus, craftsmen who forged rippling kris daggers from meteorites for young men coming of age, imbibing them with spiritual power. Indigenous metalworkers in the Northwest Coast made fighting daggers to tie around their wrists and do battle, the first of which was forged by a woman from meteorite, or so the story goes. "But it’s legend. That’s not true. None of them that they’ve found actually have meteorite in them," Kramer says. "But it’s a great story. I love it."

We don’t know if Bourdain used his custom Kramer knife to chop up carrots and slice raw chicken, but he imbibed the meteor knife—crafted on a backbone of mythology that he, a lover of tales, would certainly have lapped up—with his own mythology. Bourdain: cultural chronicler of the food world, inspiration to aspiring chefs and old friends and everyone in between, owner of an extremely cool knife.

It doesn’t matter to Kramer who ends up with the Bourdain knife, only that it goes for a whole bunch of money to help Bourdain’s family and the scholarship recipients. "I make these things and then send them out into the world, and then they live their own life," he says.

There’s magic in things left behind for the living.



Correction: A previous version of this article stated that 60 percent of the proceeds from the auction would go to a scholarship in Bourdain’s name, and 40 percent would go to his family. The article has been updated to reflect the correct allocation.

Sarah Rense Sarah Rense is the Associate Lifestyle Editor at Esquire, where she covers tech, food, drink, home, and more.

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