Mokume Gane is a Japanese term that roughly translates to mean “wood-grain in metal”. It was always one of those ancient mysteries of the orient. Primarily it was a metal billet formed from layers of metals that varied greatly in color. These billets were then shaped and deformed to bring out brilliant patterns on the surface. This metal technique was seen mostly in the furnishings of samurai swords. These uses included handles, guards and the sheaths of these weapons. Mokume Gane was highly secretive process that was passed on from artisan to artisan in an oral tradition.
The process of forming these multilayer billets predated technology and as such the process was controlled and duplicated by religious constraints. The temperatures were often regulated by the colors of a rising sun and the timing by the length of a chant or song. Oral traditions are easily broken as the number of participants dwindle. By the beginning of the twentieth century the secrets of Mokume Gane were thought to have passed beyond recall.
Fast forward to the rise of “Metal Arts” in American colleges and Art schools during the late sixties and early seventies. During this time period there was a wide spread attempt to reproduce the look of Mokume Gane using modern techniques. Many artisans used layers of different colored metals soldered together with silver solder to mimic the ancient art form. The results these efforts produced were very limiting, superficial and mostly unsatisfactory. There were wide spread rumors in the metal art world of individuals that wanted to make excursions into the orient to interview the old artisans of the knife guilds to try to glean some of the old ways. It was a hope that this information might result in a translation of the old oral tradition into modern metallurgy. It is not the scope of this article to explore who went where and discovered what. It is a fact however, that today one can obtain information that will result in a very satisfactory Mokume Gane billet regardless of how close it adheres to the materials of the seventeenth century. I bring your attention to the materials, publications, classes and lectures of such metal artists as Steve Midgett, James Binnion and the metal wizard I have watched closely, Phillip Baldwin.
Speaking of “Phillips” my client Philip wanted us to make a cuff for him that would turn heads and start conversations. He wanted something classy but still with a lot of eye appeal. I thought that Mokume Gane would be just the thing. I have always admired subtle things like fine Irish linen, where the closer you look the more there is to see. Sometimes you have to just sit back and let the material do the talking.
The cuff form itself was shaped in a hydraulic press with tooling that I made myself using magnets and mild steel. There was a lot of experimenting using copper and brass blanks to get the shapes and lengths just right. It was more than once I nearly gave my finger a good pinch in the press. But after a bit of time, some patience and a bunch of tweaking the project started to come around. My hydraulic press is an old “Bonny Doon” from years ago. We don't use it as much as we should and sometimes we even forget that it's in that far dark corner of the studio just under the breaker panel.
My plan was to keep this piece fairly simple and rely on the materials and “glyph” to do the heavy lifting. This is the Mokume Gane cuff that I made for him with the ever present band “glyph” on top.