The W* House / Kitchen

‘La Via Lattea’ cheese knives

Anna & Gian Franco Gasparini / Alessi

£192 set of hard cheese knives, £168 set of soft cheese knives

Alessi’s new set of cheese knives, designed by Anna and Gian Franco Gasparini, hail from a tiny atelier in Scarperia, in the Tuscan Apennines near Florence, which has a longstanding cutlery tradition. Each knife is designed for a different cheese, the broad surfaced ones for hard and semi-hard cheeses, the semi-circular one for semi-soft and the narrow one for very soft cheeses. The shape of each is designed to maximise ease of cutting the various textures and a good tip to master is to keep the arm, hand and knife aligned at all times. Such is the craft involved in the creation of each knife that one designer looks after the entire process, from the forging of the steel blade to the shaping of the boxwood handles and each blade contains the initials of the craftsman who made it.

www.alessi.com