Meet the craftsmen
The people whose hands are on every Oishya before yours.
Small, mostly family-run workshops in Japan and Europe. None of them are anonymous to us.
Why we work this way
The hands that make our products matter as much as the products.
Every knife, every handle, every board and every piece of linen and porcelain is made by people who have given their working lives to one craft.
We work with small groups of artisans who take pride in a standard that no machine can replicate. Everything is made in small batches and checked for quality, so it is made to last. We do not use ready-made materials and we do not mass-produce. Truly great products take precision, time and patience, and we grow at the pace our makers can sustain.
Where everything is made
Two continents. One standard.
Blades and boards in Japan. Handles, linen, porcelain and wood in Europe.
Japan
- Sakai, OsakaKYU blades
- Seki, GifuKATA, RYU, NIJI, SHIN and PAN blades
- Aomori hibaCutting boards
- WhetstonesSharpening stones
Europe
- Knife handlesMaple burl and bog oak
- PorcelainKintsugi fine bone china
- LinenAprons, towels, tablecloths
- WoodBoards, trays, racks and stands
Sakai, Osaka prefecture
Sakai Kyuba: masters of Osaka.
Our KYU blades are made by one of the most respected blacksmiths in Osaka, working with us under the name Sakai Kyuba. Sakai is the birthplace of the traditional Japanese kitchen knife, with a blacksmithing tradition of six hundred years, and the family has refined its techniques in its own workshop since 1927.
Each blade is made on a small scale and finished by hand. It takes more than three months and around 220 steps to make one Sakai Kyuba knife.
Seki, Gifu prefecture
Seki Kyuba: the precision of Gifu.
Seki has been a centre of Japanese blade-making for nearly eight hundred years, from the swords of its past to the kitchen knives its artisans forge today. The workshop we work with here makes five of our six lines: KATA, RYU, NIJI, SHIN and PAN.
The craftsmen of Seki are masters of traditional forging and modern precision. Steels such as VG10 and SG2 are clad in Damascus layers, and the hammered tsuchime finish is applied by hand, so no two knives are ever identical.
Aomori hiba, Japan
The board makers.
Hiba is a Japanese cypress from Aomori in northern Japan, and one of the woods Japanese cooks have trusted for centuries. It is naturally resistant to bacteria, soft enough to be kind to a sharp edge and dense enough to last. Our hiba boards come from a Japanese maker based in Niigata.
See the hiba boardsPoland
Where the handle is made.
Every Oishya handle is shaped and fitted by hand in Poland, so no two handle patterns are ever the same. Each one pairs a body of European maple burl with a bog oak ferrule, the kakumaki, joined by a hand-fitted copper ring and finished in an octagonal profile.
The burl is dried for two years, then stabilised: impregnated with resin under very high pressure until it is dense, tough and completely waterproof. The resin is coloured to give the three finishes, Natural Brown, Mediterranean Blue and Olive Green, while the kakumaki is always bog oak. Shaping and fitting one handle to its blade takes around a week.
Europe, since 1860
The porcelain makers.
Our Kintsugi tableware is made with a porcelain manufacturer whose history goes back to 1860. Every piece is decorated by hand, with a 24-carat gold Kintsugi pattern applied to New Fine Bone China, a contemporary take on the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold.
New Fine Bone China is more demanding to make than ordinary white porcelain. To reach its ivory colour it is fired at 1,222°C, and every piece is checked for quality.
Also made by hand in Europe
Wood and linen.
The wood carvers
Our wooden utensils are carved by European craftsmen keeping one of the oldest crafts alive. Hollowing, fine-tuning, drying, sanding and oiling, with many steps repeated: a single spoon takes almost a full day.
The linen craftswomen
Every piece of our linen is made one at a time by a small team of craftswomen in Europe who take pride in the detail, in a category that has almost given in to mass production.
The thread that connects them
Slow on purpose. Small on purpose.
Every person on this page could be doing easier work, faster, for more money. They choose not to, because the work itself is the point. When you buy an Oishya, you are buying their hours, and we hope you can feel it when the box arrives.