“There’s just a sort of ritual aspect to knives and cooks that I think is powerful,” says knife maker Will Griffin, of W.A. Griffin Blade Works. “The emotional connection you have to something that you use every day, that you take care of, it needs to work well and do all of those things, but it’s also a lot more than that.”

After cooking professionally for eight years, Will Griffin began to collect knives. His interest in how the tool