Evan Antzenberger

Nantes, France · High Performance, Handcrafted Kitchen Knives

Evan Antzenberger

French blacksmith Evan Antzenberger has been forging since his teens, developing his craft through early training under Master Thierry Peyranne before turning his attention fully toward culinary knives. His work moves confidently between honyaki, laminated, and pattern-welded constructions, with each knife treated as an individual resolution of steel, geometry, and finish. The result is a collection that feels rooted in traditional French forging while remaining highly personal and performance focused.

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The latest from Evan Antzenberger

Recent work

Recent releases from this workshop. Each made by hand in extremely limited numbers.

About the maker

On the workshop

Evan Antzenberger is a French blacksmith with more than fifteen years of forging experience, having completed his training under Master Thierry Peyranne at the early age of sixteen. That long apprenticeship, started young, gave him a grounded technical base before he moved into culinary knives specifically, and the discipline of working alongside an experienced master still reads through the work today. He forges each knife himself, with close attention to every step, and the workshop practice has the patient, hand-led quality of someone who came up through traditional French blacksmithing before turning that training toward the kitchen.

Cutting performance and quality sit above everything else, and the catalogue reflects a maker comfortable moving between techniques rather than committed to a single signature treatment. Evan works in honyaki, laminated and pattern-welded steels, and each knife emerges as a one-of-a-kind piece with its own identity. Material selection is tasteful and restrained, the details brought together with what reads as genuine affection for the object, and the variety across his releases is one of the defining characteristics of the work. There is artisanal quality throughout, but each blade is allowed to be its own resolution rather than a variation on a template.

What sets Evan apart in the Modern Cooking Collectors Selection is the combination of that early, formal training with the design freedom he allows himself now. The knives feel like the work of someone with the technical fluency to do whatever the piece calls for, and the editorial discipline to keep each one focused on cut, feel and finish. For a Modern Cooking audience that values maker-led work with French forging roots and individual character, Evan's knives are a pleasure to represent and, more importantly, a pleasure to use.

Steel preference

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Signature construction

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Cutting edge steel

135Cr3

Plain high-carbon tool steel

Typical HRC
62–65
Corrosion class
Carbon
Production
Conventional
Origin
AFNOR / DIN; closely overlaps 1.2008

Editorial note: despite the "Cr3" suffix, which superficially suggests a low-carbon case-hardening grade, 135Cr3 is in fact a through-hardening high-carbon tool steel. The name is occasionally a source of confusion when buyers see the steel listed in older catalogues alongside true case-hardening grades like 16MnCr5; in practice 135Cr3 is interchangeable with 1.2008 for kitchen knife purposes.

The editorial profile follows 1.2008: a respectable, traditional European high-carbon at 62–65 HRC, with moderate edge retention, good toughness for the hardness, and conventional patina behaviour. It is most often seen in French and German workshop production where the carbon-steel idiom is part of the maker's identity. Among the makers Modern Cooking carries, Yanick Puig, Milan Gravier, Guirec Péron, and Jonas Johnsson work in 135Cr3.

Also known as:1.2008

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Cutting edge steel

RWL34 / RWL

Powder metallurgy martensitic stainless tool steel

Typical HRC
60–63
Corrosion class
Stainless
Production
Powder
Origin
Sweden (Damasteel)

RWL34 — usually shortened to RWL — is Damasteel's powder-route stainless equivalent of ATS-34 / CPM-154, and is the bright-and-hard layer in much of the world's high-end stainless damascus. The composition (1.05 percent carbon, 14 percent chromium, 4 percent molybdenum, 0.2 percent vanadium) is essentially ATS-34 chemistry, but the rapid-solidification powder process produces a finer, cleaner microstructure than the conventional ingot route.

In a kitchen knife — usually a Damasteel-pattern blade — RWL34 runs at 60–62 HRC, sharpens cleanly, and produces a refined edge that holds well for the class. Edge retention is in the same band as SG2 at slightly lower hardness; toughness is good; corrosion resistance is excellent. The named association with Robert W. Loveless, the steel's original collaborator on the design, is half of the steel's mystique.

You see RWL most often as a mono-steel core in high-end custom work and as the contrast layer in Damasteel patterns. Among the makers Modern Cooking carries, Bernhard Noitz, Erik Gullikson, Evan Antzenberger, Jeroen Knippenberg, and Birch & Bevel work in RWL. It is a genuinely nice premium stainless that is somewhat under-discussed compared to the American powder steels.

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Blade construction

Honyaki

The traditional Japanese single-steel forging technique, in which a high-carbon mono-steel blade is differentially hardened — clay is applied to the spine before quench, leaving only the edge to fully harden. The result is a hard cutting edge and a softer spine that improves toughness, plus the hamon (temper line) that defines the visual signature of the technique.

Honyaki is the high-water mark of Japanese knifemaking. The technique is unforgiving; a failed differential quench cracks the blade. Honyaki knives are almost always from a single high-purity carbon steel — Shirogami #1 is the canonical choice — and are priced and treated accordingly.

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Blade construction

Mono Steel

A knife forged from a single piece of steel — no laminations, no clad layers. The simplest and most direct construction. The entire blade is the cutting steel, with no softer outer jacket to protect or contrast it. Most contemporary Western kitchen knives in carbon and stainless steel are mono-steel constructions, as are honyaki and most European bladesmith work.

The trade-off is straightforward: mono-steel knives are easier to forge, sharpen, and reason about, but the entire blade carries the cutting steel's properties — including its reactivity if it's a clean carbon. There is no soft jacket to protect a more brittle core from impact, so the heat treatment and geometry have to do all the work.

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Limited release

Reserve your place

Evan Antzenberger's work is highly sought-after for its distinctive combination of craftsmanship, performance, and design, with each piece produced by hand in extremely limited numbers — a pace of production that naturally cannot keep up with demand.

For those hoping to secure a piece through Modern Cooking, joining the waitlist is the best way to register your interest in Evan's work and share your preferred dimensions, design preferences, and intended use. As opportunities become available, we use this information to guide future allocations with care and consideration.

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