Meet the Maker: Mark Cordina of Cordina Customs

I first encountered Mark Cordina’s work from the other side of a judging table.

It was 2025, at the Adelaide Cutler’s Expo, and Mark had entered a group of kitchen knives that immediately felt relevant to Modern Cooking. The work was ambitious in its materials and finish, but there was also something more important beneath it: the beginnings of an individual design language and a clear desire to make knives that performed seriously in the kitchen.

The knives looked like they belonged in the Collectors Selection.

Meeting Mark only strengthened that impression. He was thoughtful, genuinely friendly and unusually open to discussing the work in detail. What began in Adelaide developed into an ongoing conversation about geometry, profiles and ergonomics, and eventually into the first group of Cordina Customs knives made for Modern Cooking.

An unexpected beginning

Mark makes knives as Cordina Customs from his workshop in Alexandra, Victoria, but knifemaking was not his original trade.

Before Cordina Customs, he worked across sheet metal fabrication and building, as well as spending time as a professional cook. It was an unusually useful combination of experience: an understanding of how materials behave, how objects are fabricated and what a kitchen tool is ultimately expected to do in use.

His entry into knifemaking came in 2020, when the outdoor education work he had been doing stopped during the lockdowns. Working with what was already available, Mark made his first knife from a discarded industrial hacksaw blade and offcuts found in the shed.

The materials were modest, but the process opened something considerably larger. He entered a maker competition with his second knife and continued developing from there, progressively building both his skills and the tooling around the work.

That practical beginning remains relevant to Cordina Customs. Mark’s knives have become substantially more sophisticated in their materials and execution, but they are still approached as working objects. Construction and finish matter, yet neither is allowed to become detached from how the knife feels in the hand or performs on the board.

A rapidly developing body of work

Since beginning in 2020, Mark has developed an unusually broad construction vocabulary, moving between forged mono-steel, San Mai, Damascus, copper-clad and honyaki knives.

That range demonstrates considerable technical ambition, but it does not define the work by itself. What makes Cordina Customs interesting is the identity beginning to connect these different constructions: performance-led kitchen geometry, strongly resolved materials and a level of hand finishing that rewards close attention.

His steel selection is similarly broad. The work includes 26C3 and 52100 alongside Hitachi carbon steels such as Shirogami, Aogami #1 and #2, and Aogami Super. These Japanese steels are particularly important within Mark’s Signature Series, where they become the foundation for knives that receive a more individual treatment in construction, finish and presentation.

Mark has not tied Cordina Customs to one steel or one construction method. Instead, the continuity comes through the decisions he makes around them: how the blade is proportioned, how its geometry develops from heel to tip, how different surfaces and materials meet and how the handle completes the knife.

A recognisable design language

The handles are among the clearest signatures of Mark’s work.

Rather than relying on a conventional octagonal form, Mark shapes his hidden-tang handles with a series of carefully considered ergonomic facets. They are visually complex, but remarkably natural in the hand. The facets locate the grip without feeling prescriptive, while the transitions and proportions give the handle a sense of structure from every angle.

The construction is equally important. Stabilised ebony and highly figured natural timbers recur throughout his work, brought together through complex museum-fit joinery and exceptional fit and finish. Between the two timbers often sits a hand-stippled bronze spacer—an individually worked, tactile detail now found on a substantial part of his knives.

It is a relatively small component, but it has become one of the details that makes a Cordina Customs handle recognisable. The stippled surface interrupts the precision of the joinery just enough to reveal the hand of the maker, without competing with the timber or blade.

That balance between precise finishing and visible handwork continues into the blades. Mark’s surfaces can be highly controlled without becoming sterile, allowing construction, geometry and material character to remain legible.

Recognition within Australian knifemaking

The speed of Mark’s development has been accompanied by consistent recognition from within the Australian knifemaking community.

At the 2023 Queensland Knife Show, he received both Best Chef’s Knife and Best Forged Knife. He followed those awards with Best Chef’s Knife at the Australian Knifemakers Guild Melbourne Knife Show in 2024 and again in 2025. Later that year, he received Best Chef’s Knife at the Adelaide Cutler’s Expo.

That Adelaide award forms part of the public record of Mark’s development. For Modern Cooking, however, the show also marked the beginning of a relationship.

From Adelaide to Modern Cooking

After Adelaide, Mark and I began a much more detailed conversation about kitchen knives.

Modern Cooking works with cooks, collectors and enthusiasts whose expectations can be extremely specific. Geometry has to be understood through the experience of the cut. A profile has to make sense on the board. An ergonomic decision needs to remain comfortable through use rather than merely looking resolved in a photograph.

We brought that perspective into our conversations with Mark, offering extensive feedback as he continued to develop the geometry, profiles and ergonomics of the knives being prepared for Modern Cooking.

The distinction between feedback and authorship matters. These are Mark’s knives. Their design, execution and development belong to him. Our contribution has been that of an experienced and demanding partner: handling the work closely, asking difficult questions and communicating what we believe will matter to the cooks and collectors we represent.

Mark’s response to that process is one of the reasons we chose to work together. He has been open to critique without becoming passive in the face of it—willing to test, refine and reconsider details while retaining responsibility for the final decisions. The objective was never to make his knives resemble the work of another maker. It was to help the strongest parts of Cordina Customs become more completely resolved.

The first knives prepared for Modern Cooking show the value of that dialogue.

The Cordina Customs Signature Series

The initial release consists of three individually made Signature Series gyutos. Each uses the same essential material vocabulary: an Aogami Super cutting core, nickel interlayers and bright 304 stainless-steel cladding arranged in a five-layer Go Mai construction.

The contrast between those materials gives the blades much of their visual character. Mark coffee-etches the exposed Aogami Super to a deep black while allowing beautiful alloy banding to remain visible through the darkened steel. Against it, the nickel and 304 stainless layers retain their cleaner, brighter character, making the five-layer construction clearly legible across the blade.

The entire blade face is brought to a smooth, silky satin polish. Beyond the exceptional quality of the finishing work, the polished surface helps reduce drag as the knife passes through food.

The geometry is strongly tapered and performance-led. Considerable substance at the heel gives way to increasingly fine forward geometry, while the convex transitions remain smooth and progressive. Each profile has an assured action on the board, combining confident contact through the working portion of the edge with useful movement towards the tip.

The handles bring the knives unmistakably back to Cordina Customs. Stabilised ebony, highly figured Tasmanian blackwood and hand-stippled bronze are assembled through complex museum-fit joinery and shaped into Mark’s signature ergonomic facets. They are exceptionally comfortable in the hand, with the quality of the construction evident in both the crispness of the junctions and the absence of any distracting transition between materials.

Each blade carries the Cordina Customs maker’s mark alongside Mark’s hand-engraved signature. Each is also supplied in a fitted wooden storage box. These details reinforce the individual authorship of the knives, but the appeal of the work ultimately comes from the way everything has been brought together: tapered convex geometry, an engaging board profile, ambitious material treatment and exceptional finishing as one complete object.

An Australian maker to know

The timing of Mark’s introduction to Modern Cooking coincides with the 2026 NSW Cutlers Expo, formerly known as the Sydney Knife Show. Held at Wentworth Park in Glebe on 29 and 30 August, the event brings together Australian makers, collectors and others involved in the country’s edged-tool community.

Mark’s work is also represented in the official expo raffle through a forged Damascus slicer with an ebony and blackwood handle. It is a fitting moment to recognise the development of Cordina Customs and the wider community around Australian knifemaking.

For Modern Cooking, however, this is intended to be the beginning of a longer relationship rather than an introduction tied to one weekend.

What first stood out in Adelaide is now becoming clearer: a maker with considerable technical ambition, an increasingly recognisable design language and a genuine willingness to keep developing the performance of his knives. Mark’s answers to that challenge remain his own, and that is exactly what makes the work worth following.

Explore Mark Cordina and the first Cordina Customs Signature Series knives at Modern Cooking.

Source note

Event dates, venue information and the description of the NSW Cutlers Expo were checked against the Knife Art Association’s official event page. Details of Mark Cordina’s raffle knife were checked against the official 2026 raffle listing. Maker information and the history of the Modern Cooking relationship come from Mark Cordina’s direct corrections and Modern Cooking’s first-party records.