Zoe was recommended to me by Dr Sixt Wetzler, Director of the German Blade Museum (Deutsches Klingenmuseum), for the SHE BLADES exhibition currently on view there. Her talent and her unique relationship with the blade immediately convinced me to welcome her into SHE BLADES.

Why did you start making knives?

I have always been an artist, as a child I found Myself drawn to pen and paper with the unshakable need to create. I wasn't introduced to knife making until I was 17, before then I had never really given knives a second thought. It was blacksmithing that first caught my attention, the fire, the ring of the anvil, and the feeling of taking an immutable material and commanding it at its most fundamental level. It was a feeling of found purpose, like I knew deep down I had found what I was meant to be doing, like I had found a part of me I didn't know I was missing and the rest is history.

DESCRIBE YOUR PATH, YOUR TECHNIQUES AND FAVORITE MATERIALS, YOUR SPECIALTY:

My path in knife making could be described as a conversation. I specialize in cutlery and pattern welded, or damascus, steel tools for the preparation of food. My process is one of asking the materials how they would like to fit together and carefully taking note of their response. to create tools that intuitively interface with the world around them using a wide variety of techniques and proportional design practices to treat aesthetic as a functional quality of its own.

WHAT MESSAGE WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONVEY TO THE PEOPLE WHO PURCHASE YOUR KNIVES OR YOUR WORKS?

Each piece I create is a small part of a story. The conversation doesn't end when they leave my workshop, it continues wherever they may find themselves. These are not only tools, they are living things, stories given shape and purpose, telling the tales of their making and the lives they lead in the colors and patterns playing out on their surface and reflecting the hand that guides them.

WHAT IS YOUR INTENTION WHEN YOU CREATE? WHAT MOTIVATES YOU BEYOND THE OBJECT ITSELF?

My intention when I create is simply this, it is my nature. If anything, my motivations lie less in the object themselves than in the process of their creation. Everything I make, be it knife, drawing, jewelry, sword, or painting is part of a larger body of work. A body that has grown and changed along with my own and will continue as long as I live. My childhood was defined by food, by meals shared with loved ones and in their memory when they were gone. This cherished love of cooking drew me to using the skills at my disposal to further their legacy in my own way and this body of work is dedicated to them.

WHAT DO YOUR KNIVES CUT (BOTH PHYSICALLY AND SYMBOLICALLY)?

One of the things I like most about blades is that they are, in all ways, paradoxical. A blade must be thin to cut, it must be thick enough to be strong, they must be beautiful but too much focus on beauty and they lose meaning. Symbolically knives represent a state of change, in their inherent purpose as a tool, in their material, and in their passage from one generation to the next. In a certain sense it could be said knives represent cutting through ideas and preconceptions, as a symbol of keeping an open mind and adapting to new information. My work focuses on cutting in the kitchen, on the use of cutting with the purpose of creation and as a representation of giving life.

WHY DID YOU WISH TO JOIN SHE BLADES?

The experience of any woman in a male dominated trade will always be unique, for myself as a transgender woman, even more so. Much of the knife making world operates as a "boys club" where women are often assumed to be girlfriends or wives regardless of their skill level or experience. Even outside of the maker community we have our credentials questioned without cause by strangers for simply being women. As a transgender person I have experienced both sides of this in a way that's difficult to put into words. The opportunity to take part in an organization focused on changing how women are seen and treated in this community, highlight the exceptional work of contemporary women in knife making, and represent my own small corner of the trans community is a high honor.

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@pottercutlery

SHE BLADES

Meet Zoe POTTER