Dominik Filip

Dominik Filip, who works under the name Merion Forge, developed a passion for history and craftwork early, and that interest carried through into formal study: he trained as a blacksmith for three years at school, learning the discipline of metalwork before he came to knives. A parallel interest in food and the culinary arts eventually pulled him toward kitchen knives specifically, which presented a real challenge given the limited resources for specialising in knife making in the Czech Republic. He was fortunate to secure a position training under the renowned swordsmith Pavel Bolf, where he developed his skills further and absorbed many of the Japanese techniques that now underpin his work.

Alongside the bench training, Dominik also studied Artistic Foundry at university, learning casting — a skill he still applies today, most visibly in the cast metal bolsters that recur through his kitchen knives. The wider Merion Forge vocabulary includes full tapered tangs, forged layered steels and high-performance stone-polished bevels, with each blade finished using fine Japanese whetstones. The combination is unusual: traditional forging and Japanese stone work on the cutting edge, paired with cast metalwork on the fittings, giving his knives a recognisable character without slipping into ornament for its own sake.

What sets Dominik apart is the breadth of his training relative to his age and the way he integrates those disciplines into a single coherent maker voice. Merion Forge knives read as the work of someone who has thought carefully about both the steel and the structures that hold it, and the casting work in particular gives the range a distinct workshop signature. For Modern Cooking, he is a welcome addition to the Collectors Selection — a young artisan smith with the technical grounding to produce kitchen knives that feel considered, performance-led, and made to be lived with.