GRANT
DOUGLAS
CUNNINGHAM
"to give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift" - Steve Prefontaine
photo courtesy of Chris Chapman, @northland.studio
I was born in Auburn, Washington in 1990, but grew up in the countryside a little bit west of Eugene, Oregon in a small town called Veneta. My childhood was spent on a few acres near a lake that backed up to a ripe forest where I would explore with the dogs, build hideouts, shoot birds, and try to make the DIY fishing hooks my brother and I had read about in My Side of the Mountain.
Just a few months after moving to Missoula, Montana, I began working for James Behring at Behring Made Knives in 2013. For the next decade I worked closely with Behring and Roger "Mudbone" Jones, learning the dynamic nuances of design, making, using, and selling high echelon custom cutlery. Beyond the shop, it was in those formative years that I would further develop an understanding, love and respect for the outdoors by way of bowhunting for elk, fly fishing, backpacking, and one hundred mile ultramarathon trail races through the mountains. When stuck indoors a book, drumsticks, or a guitar are usually near by.
At the 2019 Blade Show, I met "HEPK" (High Endurance Performance Knife) master smiths Jason Keen and Chris Amos. After late night discussions about good knives and bad tattoos, my visits to their compound in Fremont County, Wyoming began where Jason would cover up regrettable ink from my earlier years with beautiful new pieces. In between long sits in the studio, I was fortunate to meet Chris and Jason's mentor and legendary blade smith, Ed Fowler, at his revered knife shop on the Willow Bow Ranch. I learned a thing or two about making and using knives in hard-use ways I'd not previously thought possible... the new tattoos were a cleansing rebirth, but the cocoon I was unknowingly crawling into was much deeper than that.
In winter 2023 I left Behring to try my hand outside of knife shops and moved to Seattle to develop a family friend's craft brewery, but it was not long before I craved the freedom of country living and the challenges of making knives again. I rang up Amos in January 2024 and before the call was over my life was in a storage locker and I was on my way to Wyoming. What was intended to be three weeks turned into six months of un-learning, learning, esoteric development of craftsmanship, reason, introspect, philosophical insight and lots of shooting under tutelage of the free-thinkers of the HEPK way.
Twelve years after leaving Oregon, I returned home in the Summer of 2024 with a free mind, able hands, and a plan to make my name worth a damn. It is strange to look at more than a decade of experience as just the beginning- but that is the truth: those ten years were training and my journey has only just begun.
The Cunningham Custom Shop is me, fusing the diverse methodologies and experiences of my self and my mentors. From the knives I make, to the miles I run, to the life I live, I have discovered that endurance, toughness and resilience are achievable only through consistently applied fundamentals- a never-ending compound of forward motion decisions. I believe the easy route is a slippery slope for the weak-minded and want nothing to do with that school of thought. I represent optimization and through every step of my process you'll have the best of my knowledge and practice, mindfully crafting the knife I make for you. From the tip to the sheath, I guarantee my work yields an exceptional performance for even the most discerning user, for life.
My shop is on a ranch just a few hundred yards from the foot of the Cascade Mountains in between Coburg and Eugene, OR. With some advance notice, I welcome and encourage scheduled visits.
