Cangshan
Cangshan (pronounced Kang-Shan) is the name shared by a majestic mountain range located in southern China and a small city where company founder Henry Liu was born, grew up and married his high school sweetheart Mary.
Henry studied engineering and worked in manufacturing for many years. Producing a wide range of commercial food supply products and eventually starting his own business. After 11 years it grew to over 800 employees at three independently owned manufacturing facilities. Life was good for Henry and Mary, but ultimately their dream was to build a life and business in the United States. So that is exactly what they did in 2012 when the Liu family moved to Southern California. Henry continued to build his business, studying and observing the market around him. He built relationships with elite material manufacturers, cutting-edge product designers, and culinary enthusiasts in German, Sweden, and the United States. He worked ceaseless with his designers to reconsider conventional thinking. He built a team of people who were excited as he was about the prospect of creating something truly different in a category that had gone stale.
After countless efforts and many factory visits, Henry finally found a knife manufacturer located in Yangjiang China, where cutlery has been a tradition for over 1500 years. After speaking with them he found that they shared his vision and passion to create something truly different. This manufacturer already was making high end cutlery by artisans with years of experience and was selling exceptional quality knives to the European market.
Henry was ecstatic that he found someone with his same vision and spent days hanging around with the factory owner and made a long term joint-venture partnership plan with the factory. This is how in 2015 Cangshan Cutlery Company was born.
After two years of research, development, samples, molds, and hundreds of hours of design ideas, everything you see now is coming out, one by one from that first talk in that factory in Yangjiang China. From ideas to actual products. As a knife purveyor, Cangshan is unique in offering both Western and Japanese style and performance of products to satisfy the most discriminating members of even the world’s top chefs, while at the same time never sacrificing design.
Cangshan knives are forged from German, Japanese, Swedish Sandvik and Swedish Damasteel Powdered Steel in their dedicated knife manufacturing factory in the renowned knife district in Yangjuiang, China. Their bladesmiths are some of the highest paid in the region and they have one of the largest dedicated quality control staff in the knife district. Every knife from Cangshan Cutlery is handcrafted and hand sharpened, these are real, passionate artisans creating beautiful, functional tools.
The world has already recognized the high standard of design and performance by awarding their knives with 9 Red Dot Design Awards, 8 German Design Awards, 3 A’ Design Awards, 5 Housewares Design Awards including Best in Category in 2019, 2 Gourmet Retailer Editor‘s Pick Awards, 2 Gourmet Gold Awards, 1 IDEA Finalist Award and 1 iF Design Award.
In 2018 Cangshan Cutlery and Chef Thomas Keller have come together to begin a new chapter in the world of cutlery. Henry Liu’s uncompromising vision to develop the finest knives in the marketplace and Chef Keller’s continuous drive for innovation have resulted in the multiple award winning Thomas Keller Signature Collection. Cangshan knives are now being utilized at Chef Keller’s critically acclaimed and award winning, Michelin starred restaurants.
Cangshan was created from a love and passion for good design, that perfect balance between forward thinking aesthetics and the foundational, practical function needed by professional chefs and home cooks. They believe tools should look great and perform perfectly.
