Cherishing the countless cooking and baking memories of childhood and the resulting meals shared with his family, Jeroen Knippenberg knows well the place food plays in caring for those you love. The overwhelming satisfaction he experienced when he cooked the first dinner for his partner using a knife he built entirely with his own two hands was not far removed from the feeling of those earliest kitchen adventures. So, it’s no surprise that today, from his workshop near Weert, The Netherlands, Jeroen crafts objects that he hopes others will use to experience that same rush, for years to come. 

An engineer by day with both bachelor and masters level education in Mechanical Engineering from the Eindhoven University of Technology, Jeroen is a member of a team that specializes in heat and surface treatment. Surrounded by high-tech furnaces, specialized processes, metallurgy, and a myriad of related research endeavors, his life-long urge to understand ‘how things work’ is continually fed, inspiring the translation of theorical knowledge into practice as he crafts high performance, heirloom-quality culinary tools. Rigorous microscopic studies and hardness testing of steels and heat treatments at various steps of the process allow Jeroen to continually adjust and improve his blades quantitatively. His heirloom chef’s knives bare the hallmarks of this carefully calibrated approach.

Well aware of the combination of function and art afforded the creator of cooking tools, Jeroen focuses on the lines and shapes of the entire knife from the start to create objects of visual harmony in which handle and blade flow together as one. Throughout this aesthetically-oriented exercise it remains top of mind that no matter how striking a form may be, without the performance and comfort demanded by the tool’s operator, the chef, the object risks becoming a piece of steel to admire only. Therefore, purpose-specific function is always integral to Jeroen’s creative process. From the aforementioned precise and refined hardening and heat treatment to his compound bevel geometry, edge finishing, and even his damascus steel design, every step of the process is thoughtful and measured. A member of the thriving knifemaking community which has welcomed him with open arms, Jeroen’s dedication to his craft is well known amongst his cohorts, and he has even begun organizing and sharing his knowledge in order to further the progress and development of others who practice this most ancient art form: culinary knife making.