In 1954, the current president of MAC, Mr. Kobayashi, has been studying art sciences in Chicago, the USA. In order to afford living and paying for his studies, Mr. Kobayashi was working at a restaurant. He's been given a knife to work with. It was a heavy, dull, German knife with a dangerous point. He hated using it. Then one day while working in the kitchen he accidently dropped it. The blade cut into the floor and just slightly missed his foot. When he tried to recover it- a 3 cm piece broke off...

The broken blade looked really ugly, so Mr. Kobayashi used his whetstone to give it a new, round point and a new cutting edge. The knife was now perfect to work with and thanks to its sharpness- ready to be used. "Why does the chef's knife have to have a point?", wondered Mr. Kobayashi. A round point works perfect after all. 

In 1958 Mr. Kobayashi came back to Japan and has worked in various places. But the accident with knife always stayed in the back of his mind and gave him an idea to start a MAC company. He's registered a patent for the "Original" design which introduced MAC knife to the world. Since then more than 30 million MAC knives has been sold worldwide.

Many people ask me often, where the word "MAC" comes from. Is it maybe the "MAC the knife", the well known jazz hit? "MAC" comes from English word "MACROCOSM", which means a huge universe. Mr. Kobayashi's ambitions reach high and he wanted to introduce his knives all over the world. He has chosen for the first 3 letters of "MACrocosm".

Elwin de Veld about MAC knives:

When I first started with sharpening of the knives, together with my grandfather in 1994, we used to go to many restaurant in The Hague to sharpen. Later, when I took over, I was able to do it all myself. In 1998 I came to the restaurant Seinpost, back then with Paul van Waarden as a head chef, to sharpen their knives. Gert Jan Cieremans, the last chef of now closed restauant Seinpost, has been working there already for 2 years as a chef de partie. Mr. kuntz also has been working there in the kitchen and he owned a MAC. He was truly lyrical about it. I was allowed to sharpen it for him and ever since fell in love with Japanese knives. It's a joy to sharpen, they keep their extreem sharpness for a longer time than the knives I've known.

My first order with MAC were 6 knives from the Original serie. I gave them all to few chefs I know to hear their opinion about them. Of course, they were never returned to me- it was truly the best knfe they've ever used. Since then MAC has become very popular in the kitchens of Dutch restaurants.