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Introducing the Layer Knife, Designed for Leucadia by Michael DiTullo

Now that he’s established his own design consultancy, veteran industrial designer and Core77’s own Michael DiTullo has been branching out into areas of design he’s been wanting to explore. “I really love the kitchen space, and I haven’t gotten to do many things in that space,” DiTullo says, “so I’m super excited about the Layer Knife.” One of his consultancy’s first projects, the Layer Knife was designed for Leucadia Custom Knives and has just been unveiled.

Leucadia makes high-end knives, which presented DiTullo with a design challenge that went beyond mere function. “Once you get to a certain price point–this is a $750 knife–all the knives are good,” he explains. “They’re all sharp, they’re all made out of high-quality steel, they all have amazing edges, for the most part. So the key differentiator is the design, which is what I loved about this project. The challenge was, how do you bring freshness and newness to that?”

DiTullo found the beginnings of his answer by observing the manufacturing process at Leucadia’s facility, and thinking about the materials. “I went down to their shop and watched them shape the plates and I watched them shape the handles. So I’m just kind of taking it in, taking it in, and then that sparked an idea.

"For the handles Leucadia has been using Micarta, which had been around since 1910. It’s a super cool material, a composite of paper, canvas, linen, impregnated with resins. It can be worked and shaped like wood and the company was just using slabs of it, which is how all the other knife makers use it.”

The final piece in the puzzle came from speaking with the target end users. “I started talking with chefs,” DiTullo says, “and learned that they wanted this kind of tapered handle that was thicker towards the top and thinner towards the front. So I wanted to take the material and use really thin layers of it, and expose those layers by varying the section. It naturally produces this beautiful topographical map.”

The Layer Knife is being made to order in a limited edition run.