Meet Sam Gleeson, the man carving a reputation as Ireland's top knifemaker

Bladesman Sam Gleeson uses traditional blacksmith skills to make the most covetable kitchen knives

'I grew up with tools and bits of metals.' Picture: Michael Dillon

Knives are one of the very first and most essential of tools, and despite the ever-present threat of a sharp blade, one of the most civilising that humankind has ever created. Beginning with those made from flint, 2.5m years ago, the knife enabled our ancestors to protect themselves from mortal danger, animal and human; to kill and butcher protein-rich prey; to skin and cut hides for clothing and blankets; to cut materials to build shelters and other tools. A prehistoric time traveller arriving in the 21st-century world would at least still recognise a knife.

Mind you, should that knife be one of Sam Gleeson’s intricately worked and exquisite hand-forged blades, it would serve as a first lesson on the
concept of consumer envy. Sam’s talents were recently recognised with a prestigious 2021 RDS Craft Award, including a €10,000 bursary — the largest annual prize for Irish craft makers.

Sam works out of a converted old farm shed in Co Clare he shares with his wife, chef Niamh Fox, and their two small children, Rowan and Nóinín. The pair ran the nationally-lauded Little Fox restaurant in Ennistymon until it
became a casualty of Covid-19’s collision with the Irish hospitality sector.

Sam grew up in Cambridgeshire, England, where his father, a self-taught machinist, built and repaired vintage engines for old English racing cars, tractors, and motorbikes in a workshop at the side of the house.

“So I grew up with tools and bits of metals,” says Sam. “Sorting out nuts and bolts in the workshop for pocket money, doing odd jobs. I fell in love with metal from an early age.”

Sam dreamed of becoming a professional surfer and, the first in his family to go to third level, he chose Plymouth University because of its proximity to the sea. He studied environmental sciences, but spent as much time in the nearby art college, even attending lectures. As he graduated, he simultaneously held a one-man gallery show.

“I did art and science all the way through school and though I did science at third level, I spent all my time across the road in art college,” he says. “When I did the solo show, tutors at the art college who came along hadn’t realised I was a uni student doing a science degree.

“When I went to college, I was very idealistic, but when I finished, having learned about the environmental situation in the world left me pretty sickened. So I surfed and put my head in the sand for a while, until I did a post-grad, primary teaching degree. I thought that could be the way to get my positivity back.”

Life had other plans for Sam.

“Unfortunately my dad got very sick, a brain aneurysm — he died and was brought back to life. I walked away from teaching to look after him, but he was never the same man again. I had an imposter dad, who looked like my dad, but someone had stolen his brain, unfortunately — having a 12-year-old kid as a dad was a bit tricky. He would have loved what I’m doing now.”

A peripatetic few years, including a spell living and working in Ghana, eventually saw Sam in Ireland, working both in Dublin’s Fumbally Cafe and as a furniture designer. Ireland's food world is a tight community and he began working with Fingal Ferguson, of Gubbeen Smokehouse renown, and Ted Berner’s Wildside Catering, travelling to events cooking whole beasts over fire.

In addition to his ‘day job’ with Gubbeen, Fingal Ferguson is also a highly renowned knifemaker with an international fanbase for his iconic handmade knives, and it was surely fated he would introduce Sam to the craft.

“We ended up going down to [Gubbeen Farm in] Schull for a little bit of a holiday. He said: ‘Hey it’s about time you made a knife’, and he shoved a few bits at me and I made a knife, and really enjoyed it, and I took a few bits away with me. Six months later my dad died, and in his workshop, I found a very old and very beautiful butcher’s knife, and I gave Fing a shout to say: ‘Next time I’m down can you give me a hand to restore it’. I’d been making a few crappy knives but not really knowing what I was doing. That really got me going.

“[Famed English chef] Nathan Outlaw is a big customer of Fingal and was at Food at the Edge, and they were chatting about Nathan getting oyster knives. Fingal said: ‘Sam, this is Nathan. Nathan, this is Sam, he’s going to make your oyster knives.’ That was my first customer and there was a bit of a social media splurge after I made them, and all of a sudden I had loads of customers and a knife-making business.”

While Fingal works from pre-existing sheets of metal, Sam is a bladesmith, which means creates his own steel and hand-forges his blades, combining architectural and historical salvaged steels with German and Japanese precision steels.

“When I’m making a knife, it sits in my hand, it’s not mapped out millimetre-perfect to a prescribed detail. While I’m shaping it, it keeps going around in my hand and a lot of time I’m not even looking at it, I’m just feeling it in my hand. If I see a knife in a kitchen that I like aesthetically, I take it in my hand and close my eyes and see what it feels like.”

Later this year, Sam will announce a crowdfunding initiative to raise capital to start what will be Ireland’s first knife-making school, with Niamh
catering for students. The long-term aim is to offer accommodation, residential cookery classes, and a craft cafe.

You could pick up a serviceable industrially manufactured knife for a fifth of the cost of one of Sam’s creations, but you’ll never, ever treasure it in remotely the same way.

“They are handmade to an end. I think their popularity is a little bit of a backlash against disposable society, people realising they have a chance to explore something more functional, that will last, putting more value on materials and investing in something of worth rather than buying cheap throwaway crap.”