Cutlery production in Thiers is first documented in the 13th century. At this stage, production would still have been small and varied, mixed with other metalwork and repair work. The importance of the 13th-century reference is that it places knife-making in Thiers at a time when many European towns were only beginning to develop durable manufacturing identities. A craft that could be named and recorded had customers, methods, and enough continuity to be recognized in the town’s economic life.

During the later Middle Ages, the Durolle’s role became more direct. The river had long been used to power flour mills and fulling mills, and as knife-making expanded, it also drove hammers for metalworking and grindstones for sharpening. Grinding and polishing were especially well suited to waterpower because they demanded steady rotational force and long hours of repetition. This is where Thiers began to develop the industrial geography that still defines it in historical memory: work concentrated along the gorge, where the water could be captured and turned into motion, while the town above served as a place of merchants, workshops, and families tied to the trade.

Instead, different workers specialized in different steps, sometimes in different buildings and sometimes in different villages around Thiers. Steel bars could be thinned by “martinaires,” using trip hammers powered by the Durolle. Blacksmiths forged parts. Filers, drillers, grinders, and polishers handled the shaping and finishing, often on river-driven stones. Handle-makers produced grips, and assembly was frequently done on the outskirts rather than directly in the valley workshops. This structure helped Thiers scale. It created refined skill in each task and allowed a network of small specialists to produce large quantities without requiring a single centralized factory.

By the 17th century, Thiers cutlery had reached beyond the French market. Merchants exported to countries including Spain, Italy, Germany, and Turkey, and possibly to “the Indies.” Export demanded consistency and reputation. It also strengthened the role of merchants and manufacturers who coordinated orders, sourced materials, and arranged transport. The cutlery economy in Thiers became more than a collection of workshops. It became a regional system that involved financing, logistics, and professional relationships between makers and sellers.

The 19th century introduced the industrial revolution’s pressures and opportunities. Thiers had long used mechanized power through water wheels, but industrialization brought a broader shift toward increased output and more industrial forms of organization. Production became more industrial in this period, and the cutlery sector strengthened its national and international identity. Rather than the older distributed labor system disappearing, it continued to exist alongside larger workshops and manufacturers who could coordinate bigger production runs. Demand for different kinds of knives also grew in modernizing societies: household cutlery, table knives, working knives, and specialized tools for trades. Thiers’ strength was that it could produce across that range, from simple utility pieces to higher-quality work, while maintaining a workforce trained through long repetition and inherited technique.

In the early 20th century, the most important technical change was the transition from reliance on the river’s mechanical power to electricity. Electricity freed workshops from the constraints of location and water flow. Rouets and factory sites tied to the Durolle could be supplemented by facilities built for space, safety, and efficiency. It also allowed more steps of production to be grouped, and it reduced the vulnerability to floods and seasonal shortages of water. The river remained part of the town’s industrial landscape, but power was no longer exclusively bound to it.

The world wars and the broader 20th century reshaped French industry, and Thiers was no exception. Like many manufacturing centers, it faced the practical challenges of labor disruption, supply problems, and shifting markets. After 1945, Thiers entered the same period of expansion seen across much of France. In the decades after the Second World War, especially during the post-war boom often associated with the “Trente Glorieuses,” the town’s industrial geography changed. Cutlery workshops and factories began relocating away from the narrow Durolle gorges and into new facilities in the lower city. This move reflected simple realities. The gorge sites were cramped, hard to access, and difficult to modernize. Larger buildings on flatter ground allowed more mechanization, better transport links, and room for modern production needs.

From the 1980s, that expansion continued with the development of industrial zones near motorway access, including areas known as Felet and Racine near the A89 exits. This period also coincided with intensifying global competition, including competition from lower-cost manufacturing regions. The challenge for Thiers was not only to produce, but to maintain value through quality, specialization, and innovation while protecting a heritage that was still economically active.

By the 2010s, Thiers’ role in French cutlery production remained dominant. In 2016, Thiers was cited as accounting for 80% of France’s annual knife production, and it continued to be described as the largest cutlery production center in the European Union. Those figures point to the scale that still exists alongside the town’s artisanal reputation. Thiers produces industrial quantities of kitchen, table, and pocket knives, while also supporting a community of high-end and artisanal cutlers whose work circulates among collectors and specialists. The same town that once relied on water-driven grindstones in the Durolle gorge now operates in a world of modern machinery, advanced steels, global supply chains, and international competition.

Thiers is still, in a literal sense, a working cutlery town. Its reputation comes from the way generations of workers adapted a craft to local conditions and then adapted those conditions to new technology. The Durolle gave the town an early advantage, but it was the organization of labor, the depth of skill, and the willingness to reorganize production when circumstances changed that kept Thiers at the center of French cutlery. The modern city carries its medieval streets and its industrial valleys in the same footprint, and it continues to treat knife-making as something more than a souvenir of the past. It remains a living trade, tied to families, workshops, and firms that still earn their place in the economy of Thiers, and still give the town its long-standing name as a cutlery capital.