In April, an email landed in my inbox from Larry Leibowitz, the owner of Common Craft in South Boston. His restaurant runs a rotating culinary concept called The Current, a six-week program that spotlights the people, tools, and craft behind the food world. Each rotation is built around a tool or product, features partners with unique stories, and has a real point of view.
Their next rotation The Edge; which launched May 1st is built entirely around knives, the craft, the obsession, the people who make and use them. When they started looking for a knife roll to be part of the program, SHEATH came up immediately. Local, premium leather, built for working chefs. It was exactly the right product for what they were doing.
The thing about a recommendation chain like that is what it tells you. SHEATH wasn't on Larry's radar because we paid to be there, but because we were on his radar and thought we belonged in the same conversation.
Naturally, I drove down to South Boston to visit the restaurant.
The first thing you see when you walk into Common Craft is a wall that runs along one side of the space and it doesn't celebrate the food, but celebrates everyone who made the food possible. The leather makers. The knife makers. The farmers. The fishermen. The artisans whose work sits invisible on every plate. That wall is the entire thesis of Common Craft compressed into a single image.
The kitchen was quiet when I visited. Not slow, but elevated. The team moved in sync, the way kitchens move when the leadership has set a culture that runs without shouting. I met the owners, presented them with the first samples, and we started talking about what a real partnership could look like.
Back at our workshop, Glenn made the rolls. But these weren't standard Heritage Rolls. Common Craft asked for a custom co-branded limited run, and we built them in an exclusive brown leather color way, stitched and stamped with both our logos. It was the first time SHEATH had ever produced custom-branded rolls. Glenn worked through the stamping process by hand, the same way he stitches every other roll: slow, deliberate, the way leather work has been done for a century.
We brought a camera to his workshop and captured it. The stamping. The stitching. The quiet of a Norwood workshop where one man makes things to last a career.
After we finished making each knife roll for the team, we brought them back to Common Craft to present, and gift them to the chefs. It was a fulfilling feeling watching these hard-working chefs run their hands across each knife roll, and smell the leather. It showed that this would be a valuable tool for their kitchen.
For most of SHEATH's history, we've been heads-down at the bench. Now we're partnering with restaurants whose entire mission is highlighting the people behind the food. Every chef we meet through Common Craft becomes part of the story. Every roll we make for their team becomes a piece of someone's craft. The brand we're building isn't centered on us. It's centered on the chefs who carry our rolls and the artisans who make the things in their kitchens.
The Edge is live now at Common Craft, South Boston.
— Jason DeBerardinis
Founder, SHEATH