At a friend's barbecue recently, I watched – or winced, in fact – as he drunkenly chopped onions with a knife that was far sharper than he probably ought to have been wielding. It was a beautiful blade with a handle that appeared to have been wrought from marble, and as it glided weightlessly through those hefty alliums, I held my breath and shut one eye, fearful that his clumsy digits weren’t to remain intact for much longer.
“Where’s that knife from?” I asked, hoping he might stop (I’d assumed based on its profile, somewhere in Japan). “A guy makes them just down the road in Dalston,” he replied, suddenly clutching a finger, a worried look gathering across his brow. “Like a lot of these guys, he started out making them in his shed, only a few years ago. Now he’s making knives for some of the country’s top chefs. Look him up.”
British knife makers have been growing in number for some years now, but unless you were to know better, it would be safe to assume they were still mostly moonlighting blacksmiths or relics of Sheffield’s halcyon steelmaking days. Trendy East London doesn’t seem an obvious place for someone to be fashioning this most primitive (albeit handsome) utensil. Only, on closer inspection, it turns out Britain’sknifemaking boom does have its roots firmly in London.
When Jon Hawkins from foodism first met with Jon Warshawsky, James Ross-Harris and Richard Warner, co-founders of Peckham’s Blenheim Forge, 10 years ago, they were three years into their knife-making journey, heating Japanese steel in a rudimentary homemade forge and grinding it using a contraption that involved an old motor, a beer barrel and a circular whetstone. They were doing alright, selling mostly to local restaurants, hoping to tap into the wider London market. These days, they’re still operating out of the same ramshackle workshop under the railway arches next to Peckham Rye – now making 50-60 knives a week – but they can count Nigella Lawson and Francis Mallmann among their fans. In 2019, they made headlines for selling almost £30k-worth of knives to Gordon Ramsay.
Ben Bodman admires the pattern welding on a Damascus steel blade at Bodman Knives
“When we started, it was such an alien concept, the idea that a knife could be made by hand,” Ross-Harris tells me. “Initially, we took a similar approach to many Japanese blacksmiths, where each of us focused on a particular aspect of the process. I forged and heat-treated the blades, Jon ground and polished them, and Richard oversaw the handle-making. This allowed us to develop our processes relatively quickly compared to a smith working alone.”
“Blenheim was key to the success of British knifemaking,” says Tim Westley, the lone bladesmith behind Clement Knives. “Their knives are bold, they did well on Instagram and got a lot of press. And that certainly gave us young knifemakers confidence. They inspired a lot of people. Their success was like a rising tide that sort of floated all of our boats.”
Forging hot metal at Bodman Knives
Whether he meant it or not, it’s a fitting analogy. Westley, a former chef and self-styled zero-waste hero, makes his knives’ handles from waste plastic, much of which he used to find while paddling his canoe around Lot’s Ait, an island in the Thames near Brentford. He has since moved to Dumfries and Galloway, where he experiments with more local waste materials such as shotgun cartridges, fishing nets, NOS canisters and decommissioned whisky barrels.
Using the traditional Japanese san-mai (three layer) technique, he sandwiches a high-carbon steel used for the cutting edge between two layers of softer “sustainable” metal. “Society calls it waste, but I see it as a free resource,” grins Westley behind a bushy blacksmith’s beard. “It’s about having as low an impact as possible. I’m not chasing money. I love making knives, I don’t particularly enjoy selling them.”
Still, he reckons Scotland was an inspired move. Compared to England, there are very few people making kitchen knives. Rather, those with a bladesmithing inclination tend towards the traditional knife of Scotland, the sgian dubh – which means he’s quickly made a name for himself among the region’s top chefs and design aficionados (his are the only knives sold at Bard, a shop and gallery in Edinburgh dedicated to Scottish craft, co-founded by Wallpaper Magazine Design Director, Hugo McDonald).
Indeed, many of the new crop of British knife makers have started producing the kind of instruments that might be better viewed in a display cabinet than used to hack at a spud. “It’s a combination of metallurgy and sculpture,” says Fingal Ferguson, admittedly an Irish knifemaker, but one whom his British contemporaries consider one of, if not, the best in the business – certainly in terms of aesthetic value. “By that I mean that there are times during the knife-making process where you are gung-ho, full metal jacket, sparks flying everywhere, heavy metal on in your headphones. And then there are times when you put some classical music on and sit sanding for four hours. I always refer to that as my Mr Miyagi moment.”
Ferguson learned his craft from Rory Connor, whom he describes as “the OG, the GOAT, the best knifemaker Ireland has ever produced”. Connor was taught by Bob Loveless, an American legend of the knifemaking world. This gives an indication of how intimate the industry is, even on a global scale. Indeed, the same names have a habit of resurfacing.
There are times during the knife-making process where you are full metal jacket
For Ferguson, a fifth-generation farmer, equally proficient at making cheese and smoking meats, it was a love of food that led him down the knife-making rabbit hole. “At first, all I wanted to know was how to make a knife so sharp it could shave the hairs on the back of your arm,” he recalls. “It was never the plan for knife-making to become a business. But the more you learn, the more you realise you don’t know. It’s a bit like fermentation in that respect: you think you have it down and the next thing you’re completely humbled.”
Cookware company Katto crafts knives in Sheffield, the British steel capital
There’s no mistaking one of Ferguson’s knives. He has taken the art of pattern welding – often known as Damascus steel (though technically a misnomer considering Syria hasn’t produced wootz since the 18th century) – to new levels of graphic, mottled intricacy. Since 2022, his work has been recognised by Homo Faber, a guide to the world’s most elite artisans, and at one point, he had 980 people on his waiting list. Realising most of those would have died long before he got round to making their knives, he scrapped the list in favour of a seasonal “drop” system, arguably creating even more buzz in the process. This allows him to make the kind of knives he wants to make, as opposed to commissioned pieces, which he says speeds up the process “20-fold”. Drops happen on Sunday afternoons to give working chefs half a chance of acquiring one.
“Seeing Fingal’s knives made me realise there were levels to knifemaking,” says Wiltshire-based knife maker Ben Bodman, also from a farming family, who cobbled together his first forge using a hairdryer (to act as bellows), a bit of metal pipe and a 50-gallon oil drum. At the time, Bodman was a chef at three-Michelin-starred restaurant L’Enclume in Cartmel and says it was there that he spotted an opportunity. “I was working on the fish section and sharing the bench with another chef, so there was no room for us to have our knife rolls,” explains Bodman. “So I decided to make a long slicing knife that I could do pretty much everything with. I could be breaking down a massive turbot in the morning, chopping fine herbs for service or doing tight fillets of mackerel and not have to change knives. I thought that was quite nice so I started out making them for a few of the other chefs as well.”
Blacksmith Blenheim Forge has been operating for over a decade in South London
Following YouTube tutorials, Bodman quickly got the hang of cutting, tapering and grinding his bevels and soon began experimenting with new styles. He says a watershed moment was being asked to create a range of knives for luxury retailer Abask. It might not be where grizzled chefs go to buy their blades but a serious craft endorsement nevertheless. His boss, culinary heavyweight Simon Rogan, also took note and now Bodman’s steak knives are used throughout Rogan’s eight-strong Umbel Restaurant Group. A new range is also in the works for Chef Tom Barnes’ Skof in Manchester. Again, his knives are clearly influenced by Japanese cutlery but he admits that, given the quality of today’s steel, they don’t actually need to be made in the same way. “Part of the reason why the Japanese got so good at crafting blades was because, for a long time the steel they used wasn’t of great quality,” he says. “And so they’d keep folding their blades in half and hammering them, mainly to get rid of the impurities. With modern steels, they’ve more or less eradicated those issues.”
In Sussex, Andrew Lindsay of Two Sticks Forge goes to every length to craft his knives in the traditional Japanese way, but with a modern appreciation for materials. He learned the ropes from a master knife maker in Sakai, a Japanese blade-making town famous for single-bevel sashimi knives, before Anglicising his craft under swordsmith and all-out Viking, Owen Bush, who, according to Lindsay, taught dozens of Britain’s top makers (not least Ferguson). Two Sticks Forge is home to Europe’s only two traditional Japanese belt hammers, and Lindsay’s wife is Japanese, but these days, shop talk veers away from all things Japanese, instead focusing on the quest for the best high-carbon steels, Hitachi Blue Paper #2, Spicy White, SG2, or the latest alloys developed by celebrated American metallurgist Dr Larrin Thomas. From time to time, he’s also been known to make knives from the leaf springs of old MGs, Land Rovers and articulated lorries.
A Two Sticks knife
“Sometimes I worry that my USP is not very strong; some might even say my knives are quite derivative,” says Lindsay, who trained as a fine artist before spending 15 years designing games for Microsoft.
Despite this, he says he’s “less interested in the flashy, overly detailed knives, in favour of more rustic blades with clean lines,” adding that, “For me, knife-making, like painting, is an exercise in creative problem solving, of making something with the hands. And I think that’s what has appealed to so many people over the past few years. I’m hearing about a new knife maker almost every week these days.” “That’s the bad thing about having a good idea,” says Westley, ruefully. “There’s usually someone around the corner who is waiting to steal it!”
Andrew Lindsay with Japanese hammer at Two Sticks
Ross-Harris believes the knifemaking community is “fairly friendly” and that competition tends to get the best out of people, but a number of the knifemakers I spoke to seem to think not everyone is doing quite what they say they’re doing. “There are a lot of snake oil salesmen in the knifemaking world, and I’m not sure why it attracts so many of them,” says Laurie Timpson, a former officer in the Scots Guard who started Savernake Knives in 2015. “A lot of these brands claim to be pattern welding when in fact the blades are simply laser-engraved.”
Putting an edge on the steel at the Savernake workshop, in a converted sawmill
He uses Latvian knifemaker Huusk as an example of a brand claiming their blades are made in Japan when in fact they’re mass produced in China. Or Florentine Knives, which claims its blades are handmade in Barcelona but are actually ground by Richard Airey in Sheffield. And Timpson was far from alone in suggesting that there are at least a couple of British brands buying their blades from Chinese online marketplace Alibaba (of all places), hafting them in the UK and passing them off as hand-forged. Apparently, these knives are sold for a similar price as their competitors, but by lowering production costs, the brands have more budget for marketing, creating what some knife makers consider to be an uneven playing field.
Savernake, also based in Wiltshire, uses pioneering milling technology developed in Formula 1 to shape its muscular custom-made and fully bespoke knives (a rarity in the industry) – used by the likes of Tom Aikens, Margot Henderson and King Charles’ personal chef, Mark Flanagan. All of the brand’s products are independently tested by Catra (Cutlery Allied Trades Research Association) and deemed to be within the top 2.5% of knives based on hardness, sharpness and durability. For Timpson, transparency is paramount; he’d be the first to admit that the knives in Savernake’s off-the-peg British Steel Range are ground by Samuel Staniforth in Sheffield. “They’ve got a state-of-the-art £250,000 CNC machine which takes precision and speed to a whole new level,” he says. “Plus, those guys have been doing this for over 150 years.”
The Dalston workshop of AllDay Goods, where the handles are just as well known as the blades themselves
Samuel Staniforth also makes its own excellent cutlery as well as more industrial boning, skinning and butcher’s knives for the “Big Five” meat packaging companies in the US. But increasingly the team find themselves making white label collections for celebrity chefs including Tom Kerridge and Tom Straker (Form Cookware). “As supply starts to outweigh demand for a lot of these smaller British knife brands, I expect we’ll end up helping them with various aspects of the knife-making process,” says Ben Hopkinson, production manager at Samuel Staniforth. “And of course, I expect ‘Sheffield Washing’ to continue becoming more of a thing.”
It’s perhaps a cynical way to look at it, but there are knife makers out there looking to cash in on a loose association with Steel City. Others seem genuine in their attempts to resuscitate the city’s dwindling knife-making industry. Blenheim Forge has partnered with Footprint Tools on the first drop-forged stainless steel knife to come out of Sheffield in over 20 years. And Katto, which employs Sheffield-based Equipoise to finish its knives and fit the handles, is looking to go one step further. “We still use a Japanese steel called AUS 10, but our ambition – and I’m sure it’s the same for most British knife makers – is to be able to produce a steel in Sheffield that displays exactly the same characteristics,” says Josh Roberts, the founder and CEO of Katto knives. “Only, there are a lot of challenges that come with that, not least that there aren’t a huge amount of people still pouring steel in the UK, and that makes your supply chain very unreliable.”
Handles are crafted from reclaimed and recycled plastic which is melted down and moulded for a unique and playful grip
SF100, a high-performance British steel originally used for scalpels and razor blades (namely Wilkinson Sword), would be the go-to for most (Savernake uses it for its British Steel and DNA ranges), but stocks are at an all-time low. Roberts says SF100 is only ever poured when orders reach 100 tonnes, so the aim is to be in a position to go in on a portion of that. “If we can get to the stage where we’re able to make really great steel here in the United Kingdom again, it would be of huge benefit not only to Sheffield and the knifemaking world, but the country as a whole.”
Even with the success of British knifemaking, that is a big if. So, how else does one look to scale? Allday Goods, makers of the aforementioned knives with the marbled handles from Dalston, has enjoyed a meteoric rise. Blade-making operations are split between the world’s three knife-making capitals, Seki in Japan, Solingen in Germany and the once-mighty Sheffield – a nice touch – but unlike other brands, here the handles are arguably the star of the show.
Samuel Staniforth’s Ecclesall steak knife range
Hugo Worsley, a former chef and founder of Allday Goods, says he was struck by the amount of plastic waste produced in commercial kitchens, so, during lockdown, he began melting milk bottle tops using a toastie maker in his parents’ shed and moulding them into knife handles. Fast forward five years, and Allday Goods is B-Corp certified and possibly making more knives than any of its rivals (approximately100 chef’s knives every week) – partly on account of a more accessible price point but largely because of its sustainable ethos and canny approach to collaboration.
Samuel Staniforth is a company based out of Sheffield that has been making knives for over 150 years
“One of the biggest things for me was going into a space which is quite archaic and traditional and there hasn’t been much in terms of innovation or disruption,” says Worsely, who is akin to a low-key marketing savant. “A lot of the products tend to be quite similar to each other but beyond that, I felt there was an opportunity to create something a little more exciting, as there’s always seemed to be a huge disconnect between the playful, fun side of cooking
and the tools we use to do it.”
We’re not bound to any hard and fast rules; we can take the best of both worlds
Colour, then, is key to the offering. Quite where that colour comes from is the creative part. For green handles, Worsley collects, washes, shreds, melts and extrudes hundreds of plastic Maldon sea salt containers. For electric blue handles, he does the same with great tubs of Belazu olive oil. He has also gathered waste plastic from brands including Paul Smith, Service Works, Soho House and Abel & Cole to make exclusive batches of knives that sell out more or less instantly. Now, he plans to lean further into the idea of repurposing kitchen waste to create an industry-defining circular economy. His first “bin day” will see him raiding the Biffers behind neighbouring bakery The Dusty Knuckle in search of suitable waste plastic. “These are knives that will last a lifetime, made for everyday home cooks,” says Worsely. “And hopefully we’re doing our bit in the process. I believe 74% of plastic waste gets taken to landfills or incinerated each year. I’d hate to see what that looks like.”
Fine-tuning a handle at the workshop
“I think everybody’s gathering from so many different canons and so many different sources of inspiration,” says Bodman, when asked if he thinks British knives are starting to find their own identity. “The good thing is, we’re not actually bound to any hard and fast rules. We can take the best of both worlds.”
For Blenheim Forge, that means “tweaking the Japanese profiles to allow for the rocking or ‘locomotive’ chopping action popular in the West.” For Two Sticks Forge, it’s using traditional tools to shape modern materials. Either way, there’s a youthful sense of wonder and creativity and experimentation within British knifemaking – not to mention responsibility – that has perhaps been lost or forgotten by many of the staid, old-school makers of Germany, Japan and even the US.
“I think we British knife makers understand that there’s a story to be written about the materials that isn’t necessarily metallurgy,” says Westley. “We’re less interested in using really exotic woods and the hardest, most expensive steels. For a lot of us, I think the real value, or indeed the beauty, is actually in the idea.”
