“Clay and metal seem really different, but they both have memories and they’re both from the earth,” says knifemaker Hayden Scott, who lives and works from a bushy section in Swanson, just off Scenic Drive in the Waitākere Ranges, with his partner, ceramicist Janel Reid. “You have to listen and pay attention – you have to tune into the materials. They dictate what you make at the end.”
Scott runs Champion Knives, and sells handmade, richly patterned pieces. They’re often made using carbon steel, blackened from the forge, and have handles crafted from old pieces of pōhutukawa and tōtara, stabilised with resin. Reid works under Okay Ceramics. She makes textured, earthy pots, plates and cups (you might have seen them at Al Brown’s Depot restaurant), often roughly hewn, with moody glazes.
They’ve worked from this spot for the past four years, since leaving their little house in Rānui. The bush with its kererū swooping past was one attraction; a ramshackle collection of sleepouts, sheds and workshops was another – though the decades of unconsented additions and structures took some undoing. “We couldn’t buy it at auction, but then no one else could either,” says Reid. Undaunted, the couple managed to purchase the house, remedy the unconsented bits and set up their studios.
After years of working from a tiny shed in the back yard or, in Reid’s case, the kitchen table, having dedicated space was a revelation. “I was making at the kitchen table and then tidying it away and cleaning up every day,” she says. “We had shelves of ceramics drying in our bedroom, which I’m sure was healthy.”
The move marked a distinct shift for both of them: within a year of relocating, they’d given up their full-time work with Brown – Scott as a chef; Reid in accounts – and committed to their crafts. Both make and sell their handmade products, as well as offering classes to aspiring knifemakers and ceramicists. Scott also sharpens knives – you can find him outside Farro Grey Lynn in Tāmaki Makaurau on Saturdays. The floods and cyclone damage of 2023 played a hand in the transition. With Scenic Drive out of commission, commuting to work in the city became a three-hour round trip via nearby Te Henga, leaving little time for their own creative pursuits. “This place had the potential of: ‘Oh, we could do this at home,’” says Scott.
Today, he works from a forge and workshop in an old carport at the bottom of the section, and another workshop in an old hut at the top of the driveway. Reid has her kiln in a converted sleepout, and a studio in a former garage-turned-sleepout. They’ve done all the work themselves, turning a bunch of rank, rundown buildings into a charming complex of workspaces. Outside Reid’s studio there’s a sunlit room with a long steel bench and a place to sit with a coffee, their products on display.
Scott first encountered knifemaking on a trip to Tasmania while filming a TV series with Brown. They visited a man near Hobart who crafted knives from recycled sawmill blades. “He was a Hobbity guy with a beard who lived in the bush making patterned steel knives for chefs, and I thought, ‘This is crazy.’ I’d used a knife all my life, but I’d never come across knives like these,” Scott recalls. Inspired, he returned home, did a bit of research and built a small forge from a defunct 9kg LPG bottle.
His first attempts weren’t very good. The process is incredibly delicate, with different actions happening at very precise times. Steel-making involves layers being folded into and over each other at extremely high temperatures. The folds are what ties the steel together, but they can also be its biggest weakness. In one of his workshops, Scott has a stack of castoffs that didn’t make the grade, including one with a split down the middle where the steel has sprung apart. In the event a knife breaks during production, it’s often a matter of grinding it back. “They say there are no bad knives – only smaller ones,” Scott says.
Each piece feels delightfully alive. I’m standing in his workshop as he sharpens some very blunt kitchen knives I’ve brought from home when I become transfixed by a particular knife in progress. It’s a big chef’s knife, maybe 20cm long with a high heel, a blackened blade and a steely glint where Scott has started to sharpen it. It isn’t finished and it doesn’t have a handle, but it has an elegant weight and a balance to it. I can imagine reaching for it instinctively and appreciating its heft while I cook. “Things aren’t just things, they have connections built into them and you feel things when you use them,” he says. When you cut a lemon with one of his knives, it marks the blade with black, like a living thing. “But I’ve always thought they had to work first. They’re beautiful, but they have to cut the carrots, for sure.”
Reid started working with clay eight years ago, helping ceramicist and designer Holly Houston get her production pieces out the door. It was a very subtle, slow process, but she found she was good at it, and enjoyed it. “Ceramics gave me the feeling I had been searching for,” Reid says. “It grounded me, and it was something that was mine. I could make these pieces into a thing that people found beauty in and that I was proud of.”
The day I visit, there are pieces in greys and greens and browns, and a number feature steely grey interiors. She’s not particularly hung up on perfection – which informed the joking tone of the name – and is attracted to the obviously handmade. I buy a pot with a drooping, wonky lip. It’s a moment on the wheel caught in time, something that happens when the speed you’re pulling the pot up at varies too much from the speed of the wheel. “It’s a continual lesson in being humble,” she says. Most potters would throw it on the pile to be reused. Not Reid. “They represent my progress and how I choose to travel through life. So I continue to guide the clay in whatever direction it pulls, and embrace the droop or tear.”
Not so long ago, Scott got on the wheel, and started to make a pot. “Hayden and I are so different in what we do,” says Reid. “He’s all hot and fire, and I’m like, let’s turn on some music and light some incense, working on the wheel.” As Scott shaped the clay, Reid coached him on what it should feel like, how he needed to tune into it. “You have to listen and pay attention,” she told him. “You’ve just got to feel it. You’ll know when the clay has been pushed to its limit.”
“I call it the controlled descent,” says Scott. In a way, it’s true of many creative processes, not just steel and ceramics. “Everything gets smaller – everything has to end up where you want it from having more, and the solution to almost every problem is to take more away. That’s the art, to work it to where you want it.”
OKAY Ceramics
Champion Knives
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