Blade runners: Knife craftsmen grind the sharpest tools to hone their cult status

A kitchen knife goes to work every day and is the serious cook’s best friend. Descendant of the sword, the knife is probably the only item in the culinary arsenal used to cut flesh in the preparation of food.

Most of its parts are named after parts of the body – the belly, the throat, the cheek, the heel and the spine. As a kitchen tool, handmade knives made by skilled bladesmiths are now becoming desirable cult objects among both domestic cooks and professional chefs.

The number of makers in Ireland is growing, as is the country’s international reputation for such craftsmanship.

Deirdre McQuillan met five of Ireland’s leading cutlers.

RORY CONNER

The sign on the stone pillar at the entrance to Rory Conner’s home near Bantry in Co Cork – “Hand Crafted Knives” – says it all.

In 1990, when Conner started making knives in Ireland in his native Ballylickey, he was the only professional cutler in the country. Decades later, Irish knife-makers look to him as the master who literally forged a reputation as a toolmaker of exceptional talent in Ireland and whose success inspired and continues to inspire others.

His talent was spotted early on when he swept up prizes at the RDS, winning the Muriel Gahan scholarships for outstanding work two years in a row. A fascination with the design aspects of cutlery and an American book on knife-making found in Paris set him off on a journey that started with fashioning knives from Mercedes car springs, using basic equipment such as hacksaws, files and electric drills.

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Later, the desire to learn led him to a period of studying with one of the best knife-makers in the world, the famous Robert Lovelace in California. There he learned about grinding (the most critical aspect of knifemaking), polishing and finishing; about steel and setting up a workshop. “Steel, like skin, has pores; like wood, it has a grain,” he explains. One of his recent commissions was 60 steak knives with Irish bog oak handles for the Cliff House in Waterford.

Establishing the heft or balance of the knife is part of the skill and craftsmanship of the cutler. Conner’s site offers a variety of knives made of the highest quality steel, from kitchen and steak knives to cheese, oyster, carving, camping, sushi and sailing knives, with handles of bog oak, rosewood, deer horn or Tufnol resin – most with their own leather sheaths, which he also makes himself. All carry the Conner family crest of a lion, and some of the ornamental daggers have his signature electro etched on the blade.

Prices start at €87 for oyster knives up to €200 for kitchen knives, €370 for a carving knife and fork (an ideal wedding present) and up to €700 for damas steel knives. Conner also offers a sharpening and repair service. roryconnerknives.com

FINGAL FERGUSON

Fingal Ferguson, of the famous Gubbeen Cheese family, has an abiding memory of his mother Giana cutting curds with her grandfather’s dressage sword on the side of the Aga in the early days of the family’s farmhouse cheese revival in the 1970s.

But it was a love of butchering that triggered his passion for knife-making and established him as one of the best in the country at handcrafting knives. Coveted by all who love cooking, from domestic cooks to celebrity chefs, at one point he had nearly a thousand people on his waiting list. One of his greatest fans is the renowned Francis Mallmann, the Michelin-trained Argentinian chef famous for open fire cooking.

Ferguson started out by taking a knife-making and bladesmith’s workshop with Owen Bush and Bushfire Forge in the UK, but his first real inspiration was Rory Conner “up the road” in Ballylickey.

He would contact Conner looking for knives for special occasions and for wedding presents, which led to knife-making becoming his hobby. In his workshop he explains the two essential parts of knife-making – the metallurgy, taking the steel to make a blade, and how different steels make different things. And the second is the handle, which can be classic or crazy.

“We live our personalities in our things,” he says, adding that “a knife is either practical or emotional”. Knife-making has to do with weight, balance, edge and geometry, and for him is an outlet through which he can channel his creativity.

Some of the more unusual requests he has had for special knives over the years include one made from the wood of a sentimental apple tree, another was for gold to be worked into the blade and someone else wanted precious jewels inserted into the handle.

“A handmade knife is a tool that makes sense to a cook, just like a Mont Blanc pen to a writer. I am part of a close-knit community of knife-makers,” he says.”. Due to demand for his knives here and internationally, he has established a monthly Knife Drop, sending out a newsletter with details of knives which will be available for purchase on a first-come, first-served basis. fingalfergusonknives.com

LUKA SCANNELL

“Me and my friend were out camping in the garden and we got a fork in the fire and started hammering on it and that’s how I got into blacksmithing,” says 21-year-old Luke Scannell, a self-taught knife-maker who learned his skills from YouTube and now makes very beautiful knives in his Dublin workshop, which are distinguished by their colourful handles. Many are inspired by PopArt and by artists such as Piet Mondrian and Roy Lichtenstein.

“I make European knives with a large belly and 7″ full-tang handles forged in stainless steel. I prefer stainless, as I don’t like giving people multipurpose knives that need a lot of care. I like to keep things simple,” he says. A year spent grinding knives with Fingal Ferguson was valuable experience for him, although his plans to do a blacksmithing course in the UK were abandoned in favour of setting up a workshop in Dublin’s Chocolate Factory.

Scannell, under his brand CollaForge, sells mostly to home cooks, although Gaz Smith, chef and owner of Michael’s in Mount Merrion, was one of his first customers. With over 43,000 followers on Instagram, Smith’s knife postings generate immediate responses.

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“I think we are fascinated by tools and it is about creating something that then creates something else,” he says, explaining the process from start to finish – the steel template, angle grinding, the kiln, cooling, tempering, grinding and polishing. He is planning to set up a Sharpening Shack to sharpen blades for €25, because “that should only happen once a year. Machine-sharpening is a mess and you can get a really good knife edge destroyed by machine. I use a strop to sharpen a blade.” There are also plans to make canvas sheaths in due course.

His customer base consists mainly of those who like his designs but are not necessarily knife specialists. “I do all my creative stuff in the handles and painted a lot when I was younger, so I do a lot of drawings and metal sculptures and follow Lea Aripotch, [the US metal sculptor] on Instagram.”

See @collaforge

SAM GLEESON

“Working with my hands and a fire to create a knife feeds a connection to the smiths of the past,” says Sam Gleeson, a multi-award-winning bladesmith who is also an artist and furniture maker. Gleeson was the recipient this year of a Golden Fleece award as well as others from Creative Ireland and the World Crafts Council. He will be exhibiting in Venice in September at Homo Faber.

From his home in Ennistymon in Co Clare, he works in a large agricultural corrugated shed in the garden, crafting knives for professional kitchens and home cooking. These knives, he says, are not just functional but are a source of creative inspiration, using centuries-old techniques to create contemporary tools.

His work often features high carbon steels found in unexpected places – among wrought iron cartwheels, whiskey barrel straps or ships’ anchor chains, with handles often shaped from long-forgotten orchard timbers, exotic limbs of storm-damaged trees or relics of ancient forests found in boglands. One knife, for instance, made for a local stonemason in laminated steel from an old stonemason’s chisel, featured a traditional-style buffalo horn bolster and wind-felled spalted beech handle. Another, a vegetable knife with a laminated steel blade with white buffalo horn and wind-felled sycamore handle, was made for the Worshipful Company of Cutlers in London.

Son of a self-employed machine engineer, Gleeson has extensive experience in smelting, iron refinement and metal lamination, and works exclusively to commission for private clients and businesses. His work is included in the 21st century Craft Archive of the National Museum of Ireland and his many commissions include for DesignPop, Tullamore Dew, The Taste of west Cork, Jameson Whiskey and IMMA with collaborative pieces for The Devon Guild of Crafts and OXO Tower, London.

He forges iron, but also friendships. His latest venture is an Irish community craft and cookery school – what he calls an Irish heritage hedge school – to teach and preserve valued skills and crafts that would otherwise be lost. To this end he has set up a volunteer not-for-profit group of artists, makers and crafters to attract funding for the workshop, with the aim of raising €60,000.

He has also reached out to makers from around the world on a collaborative blade project. Each will take a rough forged blade or laminated billet (steel forged into a blade) that he has made and finish it, or provide him with a blade or billet to finish. When all are complete – around 35-40 knives – there will be an auction, and 100 per cent of the proceeds will go to building the school.

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SAM DUNN

For Sam Dunn, who is based in Glengarriff, knife-making is a form of therapy that is very rewarding, with each knife a fraction better than the last. His knives, comfortable and vibrant, use natural materials, bog oak, carbon fibres and poured resin for different handle effects. There are hardwoods from Australia, harder snakewoods from Indonesia, walnut from Turkey, and even shredded euro notes embedded in resin – with each blade laser etched with his maker’s mark.

Fifty per cent of his knives are exported, to the US, UK and Australia. Self-taught, he says it takes “hundreds of knives to get the feel right”, and that knife-making is 100 per cent about creativity. Some of his biggest fans are Irish rugby players. He thinks an increasing desire for handmade knives stems from the fact that more men are getting into food. “They need to enjoy their kit and a decent knife to mind or to collect,” he says.

Dunn came with his family to live in Glengarriff from inner city Liverpool when he was six. Brought up to be practical, he started making knives seven years ago and believes that people are now recognising the value of superior quality knives. Social media, particularly Instagram, has developed his business and sense of community with others. Prices range from €180 for a paring knife up to €380 for a classic chef’s knife. He also sells a cool T-shirt decorated with knife images at €25. dunnbladeworks.com

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