Sustainability
The most sustainable knife is the one you never replace.
What we actually do, why we do it, and how a good knife stays in use for a lifetime.
The biggest thing we can do for the planet is make a knife that lasts long enough to be handed down. Everything else on this page follows from that.
Small workshops, run by people who mean to be there in twenty years.
Our blades are forged by blacksmiths in Sakai and Seki. The handles are made by hand in Poland, from maple burl and bog oak. Our boards, trays and stands come from an independent woodworker in Poland. The Kintsugi tableware is made with a porcelain maker whose history goes back to 1860, the linen by a small team of craftswomen in Europe, the marble pieces in İzmir, and the hiba boards by a maker in Niigata, from Aomori hiba.
None of them work at industrial speed. They make a small number of things carefully, and we order in small batches, so we are not sitting on a warehouse of things nobody asked for. No seasonal collections, no disposable gadgets, nothing designed to break so you buy it again.
Every knife passes through three to five pairs of hands whose names we know.
Steel, wood and stone. Materials that last, and look better with use.
We build around three materials, chosen because they can be looked after rather than thrown away.
01
Steel
Japanese steel, made to be sharpened rather than replaced. Looked after, a blade outlives the kitchen it lives in.
02
Wood
Maple burl and bog oak on the handles, oak and walnut for boards and stands, hiba from Aomori. Wood gains a patina. That is the look.
03
Stone
Whetstones that keep the edge going, and marble from İzmir. A whetstone wears away slowly, a little with every sharpening, and that is exactly its job.
One honest detail. The maple burl in our handles is stabilised: it is impregnated with resin under high pressure, which makes it dense, waterproof and far less likely to crack. It is the reason a handle lasts as long as the blade, and we would rather tell you than call it pure wood.
How it ships
Paper that recycles, and a bag worth keeping.
Our printed materials and cartons are uncoated paper and card, so they go straight into the recycling.
Table linen ships in a drawstring bag made from RPET, a fabric spun from recycled plastic bottles. Making it takes less energy, less water and less new oil than virgin polyester. Keep it for travel, for laundry, or for the next present you wrap.
When timing allows, we bring stock over by sea rather than by air. It is slower, and it carries a far smaller carbon cost.
A knife stays in use as long as someone keeps it sharp.
Most kitchen knives end up in a drawer because they have gone dull, and then in the bin because nobody showed their owner how to bring them back. A Japanese knife is sharpened on a whetstone, a few times a year, with a wet stone and a light hand. Once you have learned it, it takes minutes, and the knife depends on it for the rest of its life.
Learn the stone and you will rarely need us. When you do, every Oishya knife carries lifetime sharpening at our partner workshops in the UK, US and Poland, and repairs are quoted plainly. You cover shipping both ways. Every knife is also covered by our lifetime guarantee.
Made once. Kept forever.
That is the whole strategy.
A tool that is kept and used is a tool nobody had to make again. If our knives outlive their first owners, we are doing our job.
See the knives