CLEM
VANHEE

Clem Vanhee, Born in 1982 is Belgian designer and craftsman.
Married to Lieselot Geeregat, Jewellery designer at Lunalotta Jewellery since 2011.
Together they are members of Zaventem ateliers since the very beginning in 2018.

Under the brand ATELIER185 Clem creates unique hand forged knives mainly out of damascussteel that he forges at Zaventem ateliers.

Ever since he was young, Clem was facinated by knives and cutlery. A passion that never went away. The simplicity in design and functionality of knives always fascinated him.

After finishing highschool as a mechanical engineer clem started a course in blachsmithing at the artschool in Ghent.
Under the skilled supervision of Philip Vercammen I learned how to forge, wield and weld hot steel, this way turning the blacksmithing craft more and more into the almost lost art of Damascus steel forging and knifemaking. 
Philip guided me into the world of knifemaking and always encouraged and supported me to push my adventure further.

In 2017, clem said goodbye to his career as R&D manager at Metalfire architectural fireplaces and focused entirely on the art of knife forging and since then has been making unique hand-forged knives of the highest quality. 

Damascussteel knifemaking is a a very sophisticated craft, which involves a lot of different techniques and in which clem can use his manual and engineering skills. 

Damascus steel is created by stacking togehter alternating layers of different types of steel.
This mix is heated in a forging fire to 1500°C and then forged together with brute force.

The resulting block is divided into pieces, re-stacked and forgwelded together again.
This intensive process is repeated several times until a block of damascussteel is forged with the desired number of layers.

By playing with the direction of the layers during the forging process, Clem can create all kinds of different patterns in the damascus steel.