Artisan Cutlery

Artisan Cutlery entered the knife scene around 2018 where they were largely perceived as another Chinese-based manufacturer offering decent quality folders at a reasonable price. Since those early years they have built a solid reputation and produced a number of popular offerings which have been very well received among the knife community.

As they began to grow, Artisan positioned themselves as a primarily US-based operation who partnered directly with their manufacturing facility in YangJiang China to produce top quality knives using the latest techniques. They were determined to differentiate themselves from the pack through unique and innovative designs combined with superior materials while always putting their customers first.

In 2019, they recognized an opportunity to serve both the higher-end of the market as well as more budget-conscious consumers and introduced a sub-brand known as CJRB. CJRB (short for China Jiang Ren Blade, which loosely translates as China Artisan Blade) is essentially their budget-line – a model that is also employed by WE Knife with their Civivi brand.

Artisan is proud of their team of skilled designers and machinists who are responsible for hits like the Proponent, Ria, Archaeo and Arroyo. It’s true many of their early designs were pretty unconventional to say the least – but this is what gets you noticed in a saturated industry.

Every knife company wants to produce that one do-it-all EDC that literally everyone has in their rotation but that’s hard to do when starting from scratch. It’s great to see Artisan focusing on being a little different from the pack while also listening to the community and channeling that into their designs.

It goes without saying, this is an up and coming brand we’ll be keeping our eye on.