The Travelling Cleaver

In Sweden there lives a knifemaker named Robin Dalman whose handmade cutlery inspires almost fetishistic devotion. One of Dalman’s creations, a cleaver, is now making its way around the globe as The Travelling Cleaver.

It’s a brawny carbon steel Honyaki blade with a stabilized birch handle and nickel bolster. A self-sustaining giveaway program on Instagram @travellingcleaver (also see @dalmanknives) has kept the cleaver in circulation since early 2019 and aims to keep doing so … forever.

The rules: “The giveaway” winner gets to keep the knife for one month, after which they agree to also give it away, to a winner who also agrees to give it away, and so on, forever until the end of time. This faithful blade shall be eternally passed around in order to further the fame and acclaim of its talented maker, Robin Dalman, and “to generate goodwill amongst cleaver enthusiasts everywhere.”

Happily, The Travelling Cleaver spent a month in Rhode Island, staying with Chef Jes Childers at Huck’s Filling Station in East Greenwich. In an Insta post, Jes remarked that the cleaver “took this Cinderella pumpkin down like it was nuthinnnn!”

Now Jess has passed it along to Althea Grey Potter, a chef in Portland, Oregon, who posted, “I have never used such a beautiful knife. It’s light, but so sturdy it takes down any foe.” Her photo included the cleaver cutting through a giant butternut squash … like butter.

This cleaver gets around!