Why it belongs in ORBIS
Samuel Staniforth has manufactured cutlery in Sheffield since 1864, and the firm's own history page points to a specific wartime credential: it names itself as one of the original companies that forged the Fairbairn-Sykes commando dagger, a blade the company notes is still issued today.
Samuel Staniforth has manufactured cutlery in Sheffield since 1864, and the firm's own history page points to a specific wartime credential: it names itself as one of the original companies that forged the Fairbairn-Sykes commando dagger, a blade the company notes is still issued today. That lineage sits alongside more than a century and a half of forged kitchen and professional knife production carrying the Made in Sheffield mark, a designation the site frames as representing the city's centuries-old reputation for steel quality rather than a purely decorative stamp.
The current range centers on hot-forged chef's, boning, and butcher's knives for professional and home kitchens, produced from high-quality stainless steel, hot-forged and then hand-finished and sharpened by skilled craftsmen, plus a separate Scorpion line of hunting, tactical, and survival knives aimed at a different buyer than the kitchen range. Staniforth describes itself as a traditional, family-owned company, and production runs to order rather than off a retail shelf — the site quotes six-to-eight-week lead times, reflecting the made-to-order approach, with customization available for buyers who want specific handle materials or blade configurations built to their own specification.
For a visitor tracing Sheffield's surviving cutlery trade, Staniforth offers a direct line from a Victorian-era forge to a WWII military contract to knives still made and finished by hand in the city today, without the business having pivoted away from forged blades into a broader houseware catalogue the way some larger Sheffield names eventually did.