WHEN KNIFE BECOMES ART
The museum-quality blades of Mardi Meshejian, Jewelry Design ’91
When Mardi Meshejian took up knife-making nearly 30 years ago, he didn’t set out to create art. But don’t tell that to the connoisseurs who vie to own one of his masterpieces. “Making artsy knives never crossed my mind—but that’s what happened,” he says with a laugh. “I guess I approach knife-making from an artist’s perspective. I see knives as my medium.”
Meshejian’s parents were jewelers in Queens, and he had been making pieces since he was 10. After studying Jewelry Design at FIT, he joined the family business. “It was the natural next step,” he says. “But creatively? It just wasn’t coming together for me.”
In 1995, Meshejian found the creative satisfaction he was yearning for at the American Bladesmith Society school in Arkansas. He took introductory bladesmithing and a class on folding knives, and he started learning how to make Damascus steel, recognizable by its wavy, streaked appearance. When he and his wife, Melissa Merritt, Illustration ’96, Jewelry Design ’91, moved to Santa Fe, he devoted himself full time to the craft.
Meshejian brings to bladesmithing a jeweler’s love of ornate beauty and an artist’s impulse to defy convention. His knives convey the dignity of an ancient craft while also being jaw-droppingly original. “As a person, I tend to push limits. As a knifemaker, I push the limits too,” he says.
Among his peers, Meshejian is deemed a true innovator—for his designs and methods and for his chosen materials: the metals, the rare woods like bloodwood and ebony, the fossilized bone. His sculpturally sophisticated knives, which have been exhibited at the Canton (Ohio) Museum of Art, the Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock, and the Metal Museum in Memphis, are almost always surprising, but never at the expense of functionality.
Although many of his pieces are purchased by enthusiasts who display them as art, Meshejian especially enjoys making pocket and kitchen knives that find their way into daily use. Whether purchased for use or display, a handmade knife is an investment. Meshejian’s kitchen knives range from $250 for a paring knife to $1,200 for a full-size chef knife, while his art knives range from $950 to upwards of $5,000.
Bladesmithing, Meshejian explains, is bound by tradition: To become a Master Smith, one must craft knives of exceptional quality that conform to very specific structures, very classic designs. But his designs incorporate abstract motifs, fluid curves, and exquisite hues and textures, and so he has never sought that rank.
He concocts his own Damascus steel by carefully heating and hammering and fusing and folding together layers and layers of different types of steel until the metal possesses the fine molecular structure required for otherworldly sharpness. Forging the steel takes him a week; crafting the knife takes another.
“As I work, I am improvising and designing as I go,” he says. “It’s collaborative between me and the materials. I feel my way through, following the materials until the knife reveals what it wants to be.”