Stephanie Aiuto

I’ve always had an appreciation for knives and swords. When I was a child, my family would go on vacation and I would want to go see historic castles and armories. As teenager, I even picked up the sport of fencing. I traveled the world competing in sabre international world cups on the junior and senior circuit.

When I had to quit my fencing career due to injury, I needed to find a new passion. Naturally, my mother thought I would be interested in bladesmithing and got me a class as a birthday present. It was a large group class with limited instruction, but I walked away from that class with as much of a knife-like object as one could expect. However, that class was enough to spark a new passion for blacksmithing and I yearned to learn the craft.

A few months later I looked up “nyc forge your own knife” online and that lead me to my first class with Theo, and I’ve been learning from him ever since.