Banded Mirage Santoku 230mm

Real, or mirage? Don’t be deceived, to hold and to cut is to believe that steel plays the role of both abstract art and purposeful tool at once. In a mosaic carbon damascus steel pattern conceived of in Vermont’s far north by bladesmith Nick Anger and brought to life for the creation of a singular chef’s blade, lines run contrary to expectations, shapes shift and skew in the face of logic, and colors pop where none ought to exist. To be, or not to be, is perhaps the question this head-turning tool has come to ask us. Quick, light, and nimble in the hand, the tall, hardworking, santoku-inspired blade enjoys compound ‘S-grind’ symmetrical bevel geometry, a 70mm-tall heel with an edge profile that can rock on the board while push-pull cutting vegetables with similar efficacy to a cleaver, and a touch of lateral flexibility in the forward half. Balancing just at the blade’s choil, the knife is steady in the hand and not excessively heavy for its size at 9.6oz / 272g. Further securing the object’s place in contemporary cutlery’s colorful moment in time, as if emerging from a crevice to breathe the kitchen’s aromas, a rainbow disc of micarta is inlaid into a comfortable, ergonomic handle sculpted in organic Western form from a block of black micarta, one with grain that seems the resin-and-fabric extension of the steel’s multitude of layers.