The first that we did was to really analyse the knife in a, in a contemporary condition, in a modern condition, how we use knives. Now is actually very different to the way we used them even 10-20 years ago. It’s constantly changing and adapting. It’s not just a, kind of, an aesthetic change but also a functional change. So, we looked at many different facets of it and one of the ones that was quite interesting was the correlation between the materials being used in the kitchen and knives, and if you look back, some of the first worktops used for kitchens were wood, and a lot of the knives had wooden handles, and then they moved to things like melamine and, and, and those kinds of laminates. And then, plastic knives started appear, to appear and then stainless steel became very popular, and then people started to make stainless steel handled knives, out of, completely to stainless steel. And, I’m not saying that that’s a very, kind of, scientific study, but it, it just intrigued us of the fact that the, the kitchen material, the way that, that we build our kitchens in our homes and we use them and the things that actually touch your hands, start to influence the products around them. And, that’s what we, we believe in, that the things around, surrounding a particular product that we’re designing actually start to influence.
And, in that respect, one of the most interesting materials that is now being involved in kitchens it’s what, it’s what’s called Corian. Corian is a, an amazing material because it mimics marble in terms of its hardness, but also in its temperature, so it’s a very cold material. That’s what’s called a, a low thermal conductivity. And, the benefit of that is that, if you have a very cold surface, it’s, it’s very good hygienically because it, it keeps the foods cold as well. So there is a functional reason with it. The other quality of corian is that its primary colour is white so a lot of kitchens start to have this very white, clean, continuous surface, and so those kinds of two qualities, of the temperature and of the colour, started to influence what the knife was.
There was an enormous amount of, of, of, of, of study and just working with the, the project in, in the studio, and, and talking with, with lots of different people, chefs and cooks and housewives, and those kinds of things, that started to, kind of, influence the knife. What we did was to actually look at, look back, all the way back to the way the early knives were shaped and formed, and they were generally a very simple tapered cylinder that gave you the flexibility. And, we adjusted that concept very slightly into what’s called a, an oval form, a very subtle oval form, and what that does is that as soon as the handle is put into your hand, even without looking at it, you’re, you always have the blade facing downwards, so it has an incredibly intuitive quality to it even though, when you look at the handle, when you look at the knife, it looks incredibly simple and clean and pure.