Freely interpreted Mokume Gane means: wood grained metal. But unlike damast steel Mokume Gane is composed of non-iron metals.
The basis of Mokume Gane emerges from welding thin sheets of different coloured and precious metals, and their compositions with contrasting colours without using welding flux and lead ("puff paste metals"). One needs metals featuring similar metallurgic working techniques.
The layered metal blocks originated by these means are treated in a very time-consuming process with further techniques like punching, drilling, engraving, corroding, torsion, forging and milling. The optical impression of the surface structure resembles a fine wood grain. The expression "wood grained metal" derives from this visual impression.
This new/old technique allows a diversity of colour and shape which was hardly possible before. Mokume Gane metals are not simply another metal for the goldsmith. They are metals with self-contained characteristics and absolute new possibilities for arrangements and compositions. This technique has nothing to do with nostalgia, but rather with intensive contention, creating new ideas, and inovation.
Everything is possible: from simple marks to intensive patterned surfaces. It is entirely up to the artist/goldsmith to choose the desired colour combination, to endue the metal with selective patterns, and to produce jewellery of objects from this patterned metal.
"It has a curious shine. Its wavy rays glisten. It looks like a pond with a wind sliding over the surface. The forger has conjured a subtle grain - like the trails of tiny insects having crawled over it when it was still soft..." (Damast, described by B. Hajar approx. 540 AD)
"Mokume Gane is time-consuming, frustrating and tiresome. Even if each step has been followed carefully and unfailingly - the result is often unsatisfying. If you are not positively attuned to your work, and if you are not prepared to invest time and patience, if you do not want to get frustrated after every step, and if you hate to admit to possible blunder in case everything looks (apparently) successful, you should not even think about getting started!" Quote: Chuck Evens, 1983
"Mokume Gane is fascinating and irritating in equal measures. Its wonderfully emotional surfaces let it evolve into an organic metal out of which gorgeous pieces of jewellery can emerge. Scarcely anywhere frustration and euphoria are so tightly woven. Working with Mokume Gane has taught me to allow five be even." Quote: HR Spillmann, 2005
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