Good question Dana (you sound like a psychiatrist wanting to cure all these crazy knifemaking fools ).

Once I was explaining a potential customer how a knife is build and what i try to achieve while building it. I concluded with 1 sentence: "I try to make beautiful cutting tools".

You all know what it takes to make a the "cutting tool " (forging, heat treatment, grinding, polishing,...). It is my personal aim to allways improve the skills needed to achieve this goal. This pure functional aspect is an important one, but is in my eyes completed by an esthetic component.

What makes the cutting tool "beautiful"? OK, i admit that's personal. During my 5 years of knifemaking, I developped a personal style. An interesting discussion with Jean Tanazacq (a French professional knifemaker that invited me to work in his shop for a few days) helped me a lot with esthaetics. He thought me the difference between intrensic (beauty from within, caused by the overall shape and harmony between materials) and extrensic beauty (external embellishment). Maybe the freaks among us will need a simple example to understand this difference: some girls don't need makeup and have some kind of natural beauty, others cover themselves with makeup and jewels but will never have the charisma of the first girl...
How i translate this into my knives? Well, i try to combine good quality materials (hardwood, horn, antler,...) with elegance while making my knives (mostly scandinavian influenced utility knives (ie puukko's). In my eyes a guard is not crucial: these scandinavians have been using guardless knives for ages. Maybe they are genetically adapted (kevlar skin), or they adapted their cutting habits (pulling a knife in stead of pushing, using the pommel while piercing something, ...). Anyway, for me it's very important that the overall shape of the knife is one flowing gracious curve, where blade and handle form an elegant unity...