Boutique knifesmiths Florentine Kitchen Knives, based in Barcelona and headed up by duo Tomer Botner and Noam Blumenthal, are launching their first capsule collection: KEDMA. The trio of handmade knives are their first readily available to purchase from stock in time for Christmas.
For this collection, industrial designer and founder Tomer sought to explore the long tradition of Japanese knives having highly-varied profiles for each different prep task. He designed them with the notion that, as our culinary tastes become globalised, so must our kitchen tools. Like all Florentine Kitchen Knives, they are handmade to order.
The name KEDMA (Hebrew - קדמה) is a nod to FKK’s mixed heritage. It is an ancient Hebrew word meaning ‘towards the east’ or ‘facing east’. It is a reference to Asian cooking methods in terms of silhouettes, blade and handle contours and edge profiles, yet retaining materials and elements from Western and Mediterranean knife making methods. Each knife has a faceted, octagonal, iroko wood handle.
KEDMA is comprised of the following three blades:

Gyoto - longer utility chef knife, for everything on the cutting board, but because of its length can also be used for slicing. €240

Nakiri - a squared blade, mainly used for chopping, dicing and slicing vegetables, fruits and herbs. €200

Petty - The Japanese equivalent of the paring knife, featuring a more prominent heel compared to traditional western paring knives, useful on cutting boards too. Good for smaller, faster tasks as well as filleting fish and poultry. €160