French Knife Set in a Wooden Block from Patricia Wells’s Cooking School - Set 3

A knife block from the dedicated teaching kitchen at Chanteduc, Patricia and Walter Wells's farmhouse and cooking school near Vaison-la-Romaine. During her classes, students made use of these blocks. The block itself is built from pale natural wood slats bound by two steel bands, barrel-like in construction, compact enough to sit comfortably on a worktop without crowding the cook. Patricia explains that knives are deeply personal, and every cook has different preferences, so she made a point of offering her students a variety of shapes, sizes and styles. For this catalogue, she has personally selected and assembled four sets of the essential knives used during her classes. Interestingly, some of her students' favourite knives were not the most expensive — though, as Patricia notes, the difference is unmistakable when you work with a truly high-quality blade. This set carries the particular atmosphere of Patricia's teaching kitchen: the focused chopping, the conversations about technique, the rhythm of a well-run class in Provence. It would be equally at home on a serious cook's counter today, ready for daily use, or displayed in a kitchen where good tools are valued as much for their history as for their edge.