Holding History

A good kitchen knife is meant to be used. It should be picked up every day, sharpened when it gets dull, and, if it’s made well, kept for decades. 

For Chilmark artist and knife maker Colin Ruel, that longevity is part of the appeal. So is the history that can be held in the handle. 

Colin makes oyster knives, paring knives, chef’s knives, cheese knives, and other tools for the kitchen or home, selling them through his gallery in Menemsha. Many incorporate materials that have already had a life of their own: West Tisbury elm, Chilmark maple, quahog shells he finds on the beach, and wood scraps from a friend who makes bowls. 

One chef’s knife features an inlay of ebony recovered from a shipwreck off Cuttyhunk, a piece of brick salvaged from the Gay Head Lighthouse during renovations, and a quahog shell Colin found on one of his walks.

“I like when you hold an old wooden thing or an artifact or a piece of history,” Colin says. “I just imagine how much the things surrounding it affected it, and sort of almost imbued it with something. It feels like you’re kind of holding history.”

That idea — that materials carry their own stories — fits naturally with the objects Colin chooses to make. A knife is a tool meant to be used, sharpened, and maintained over time, and, if it’s made well, it can be passed down to future generations. The materials that make up its handle may have their own histories, and the finished knife can go on to become part of someone else’s. 

“Once in a while I’ll shape up the tip again, or I’ll polish it up,” he says. “They’re definitely like heirloom knives.” 

Colin has been making knives for seven or eight years, though his interest in blacksmithing goes back much further. Growing up, he loved watching blacksmiths work at Mystic Seaport and Sturbridge Village. Later, after seeing an oyster knife someone had made, he had the idea to try making his own for the gallery. 

At the time, he had already begun collecting interesting pieces of historic wood. He wondered if he could incorporate them into the knife handles. 

“I just kind of did a deep dive into the knifemaking and the blacksmithing,” he says. 

The result is a craft that brings together two of Colin’s interests: making useful objects and finding new ways to work with materials that might otherwise be overlooked. 

The ebony in his collection, for example, comes from a diver friend who explores shipwrecks around Cuttyhunk. According to Colin, ships believed to have been carrying ebony logs to a New Bedford piano factory sank in the area in the late 1800s, and pieces of the dense hardwood have washed ashore on Cuttyhunk over the years. One of the wrecks, the Willie and Ida, went down in 1888. 

Colin has also used purpleheart (a dense, exotic hardwood native to Central and South America) salvaged from an old New York City park bench, and he’s used old wrought iron from the Beetlebung Farm barn to make knives for workers there. 

For local wood, he sometimes turns to his friend Zach Pinerio of Chappaquiddick Wood Company, who gives him scraps left over from making bowls and other objects. Colin also keeps his own collection of wood drying in his workshop, often waiting years for it to be ready to use.

“If I had a log, they say an inch in diameter is about a year,” he says. “If you have a log that's an eight-inch diameter, that's eight years.”

Kiln-drying scraps can speed up the process, but when Colin finds an interesting piece of wood, he’s willing to put it aside and wait. 

“I’ve got wood that I set aside when I first started making handles that I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s probably ready now,’” he says. 

Even the quahog shells that appear in some of his knife handles are collected locally. Colin picks them up while walking around the ponds, then carefully cuts and shapes them for use as inlay. The process is challenging — the shells can crack unexpectedly, and working with them produces dust that requires water, a mask, and other safety precautions — but he likes the way they look when finished. 

The blades require their own kind of patience. Colin starts with steel, which he cuts and hammers into shape, repeatedly heating and straightening the metal. The process changes the structure of the steel, eventually producing a blade that is both hard enough to hold an edge and durable enough to withstand years of use. 

After he shapes and treats the blade, Colin grinds it and sharpens it, finishing the edge by hand on whetstones. 

Colin operates out of a makeshift workshop at his Chilmark home — a roof with plastic sides that he describes as part indoor, part outdoor. The work is hot, loud, and physically demanding, involving a lot of hammering, grinding, and protective gear. 

But knifemaking offers a different kind of creative outlet from his primary practice as a painter. When he’s been painting for months, he says, making knives allows him to shift to a different part of his brain without stopping work altogether. 

“It keeps me going,” he says. “And then I can pivot back to painting, just as long as I never stop working.”

Colin says he likes to make things that people use a lot, and that’s especially true of his cooking knives. He enjoys talking with chefs who visit the gallery, asking about the knives they use and the shapes they prefer. Some have become repeat customers, returning for a paring knife after buying an oyster knife, or eventually building an entire set. 

“I love paring knives, cheese knives, oyster knives, and then just small camping knives and knives that you might use to work around the house,” Colin says.

There’s something satisfying about making an object that will become part of someone’s everyday routine, he says — something that might be used to chop vegetables, fillet a fish, shuck oysters, or prepare a meal. It’s a contrast to the disposable culture that surrounds so many of the objects in our kitchens. The knife itself is a relatively simple tool, but making one that lasts requires time, skill, and an understanding of how materials behave. 

Colin is drawn to that process. He likes working with fire, hammering hot metal, and watching a piece of steel transform. 

“It’s so interesting to me that that’s just happening inside the metal,” he says. “It doesn’t look any different on the surface.” 

Colin grew up in Menemsha, where his grandfather, Jimmy Morgan, was a fisherman who also spent time in his workshop making weather vanes, paintings, drawings, carvings, and ship models. His grandmother, Roberta Morgan, ran the Harbor Craft Shop — where she sold things she sewed, along with her beach plum jelly and her husband’s work. Colin later took over the shop and turned it into the Ruel Gallery. That influence, he says, was less about any particular craft than the idea of always making something — a tradition he’s now carrying forward in his own way.

To find Colin’s knives, visit Ruel Gallery at 31 Basin Rd. in Menemsha, or browse the collection at ruelgallery.com/knives. Colin’s paintings are currently on display in an exhibit at the MV Museum, “Colin Ruel: The Light Is Returning,” exploring his family’s generational connection to a small fishing village, through August 16.