Salvu tas-Skieken stands in the huge doorway of his tiny workshop in St Paul Street, Valletta.

Salvu learned the trade from his father.

A woman comes up to him and from her bag takes out what looks like a parcel wrapped in cloth. He nods, walks up to his work bench and unwraps the parcel: three knives and two small scissors, looking the worse for wear.

He puts on his specs and sets to work on his machine. He grinds, he laps, he polishes and then buffs.

Within 15 minutes there are no burrs on the surfaces of the knives, the edges are sharpened and the scissors snap away the sample cloth he has on the counter at the mere touch.

Salvu Azzopardi, 66, from Valletta, is the last sharpener standing.

“As far as I know, and as people tell me, I’m the only one left,” he says.

He has been sharpening knives, saws, chisels, gardening sheers and everything that has a blade for 52 years now.

He started working there aged 14, as an apprentice to his father, who had worked as a sharpener for 35 years and who passed on to him the old tradition of a sharpener’s knowledge and skill.

“It’s not because I was particularly interested in the trade; I just did not want to stay at school,” he says. He had planned to emigrate to Canada and find work there but his mother would not sign the passport form for him.

“So I couldn’t move from Malta,” he says.

In the event, his father died three years later and at 17 years of age, he completely took over the business.

Salvu tas-Skieken in his Valletta shop. Photos: Darrin Zammit Lupi

Fifty years ago, with the Valletta market down the road from him, business was flourishing and he had to work from dawn till dusk. There was always a queue.

“I even had clients come down from Gozo – Gozitan butchers would come down twice a week to sharpen their knives,” he says.

He wants to make it clear that he has “no regrets”. “Yes it was hard work, but I can’t compare it to the hardship of toiling the fields – and most importantly my wife and I, we were never wont for anything,” he says.

As far as I know, and as people tell me, I’m the only one left

To sharpen two scissors and three knives would set you back some €10 – but he will be the first one to tell you if really you ought to bin your sharp object.

“If it’s not good quality, then it’s pointless my sharpening it,” he says. But some items are worth saving, he adds.

“When buying a sharp object you have to ask about its quality: there’s stainless steel and there’s cheap stainless steel. It doesn’t matter where it’s made – what matters is the quality. An €80 knife is definitely worth keeping,” he says, in an appeal to curb today’s use-and-discard philosophy.

[attach id=378398 size="medium" align="left"]Salvu tas-Skieken in his Valletta shop. Photos: Darrin Zammit Lupi[/attach]

His clients come from all walks of life: from chefs at restaurants, to butchers, from gardeners to sheep shearers, from homemakers to tourists. The flow is steady, but he can pace himself these days and works mornings only.

“I’m a pensioner now. I come here to keep my morning busy – it’s better than going for a beer, eh?” he quips.

“I live day by day. If my granddaughters need me to be with them, then I close shop and go and pick them up from school,” he says.

Neither his son nor his daughter have any interest in taking up the trade and have never set foot in the shop. As for his four grand-daughters, he himself puts them off: “I always tell them school has to come first.”

But you can tell that he is slightly nostalgic that old trades are dying out.

“Four decades ago, there used to be a tinsmith here in the corner of my street, fixing pails and pots and pans – that trade has died out – as will this,” he says.