Mokume Gane, The History

Hello! glad you could join as we explore Mokume Gane as it pertains to Polymer Clay techniques.  But, let's go back to how and where it originated.

First made in 17th-century Japan, mokume-gane was used only for swords. As the traditional samurai sword stopped serving as a weapon and became largely a status symbol, a demand arose for elaborate decorative handles and sheaths.^[3]

To meet this demand, Denbei Shoami (1651–1728), a master metalworker from Akita prefecture, first came up with the process for creating mokume-gane. He initially called his productguri bori for its simplest form's resemblance to guri, a type of carved lacquerwork with alternating layers of red and black. Other historical names for it were kasumi-uchi (cloud metal), itame-gane (wood-grain metal), and yosefuki.^[4]

The traditional components were relatively soft metallic elements and alloys (gold, copper, silver, shakudō, shibuichi, and kuromido) which would form liquid phase diffusion bonds with one another without completely melting. This was useful in the traditional techniques of fusing and soldering the layers together.^[3]

Over time, the practice of making mokume-gane faded. The katana industry dried up in the late 1800s when the traditional caste system dissolved and people were no longer able to carry their swords in public. The few metalsmiths who practiced in mokume transferred their skills to create other objects.^[2]

By the twentieth century, mokume-gane was almost entirely unknown. Japan’s movement away from traditional craftwork, paired with the great difficulty of mastering the mokume-gane art had brought mokume artisans to the brink of extinction. It reached a point where only scholars and collectors of metalwork were aware of the technique.^[3] It was not until the 1970s, when Eugene Michael Pijanowski and Hiroko Sato Pijanowski brought mokume works to the United States, that the artform re-emerged in the public eye. Today, jewelry, flatware, hollowware, and other artistic objects are made using this technique.^[2]

Modern processes are highly controlled and include a compressive force on the billet. This has allowed the technique to include many nontraditional components such as titanium,platinum, iron, bronze, brass, nickel silver, and various colors of karat gold including yellow, white, sage, and rose hues as well as sterling silver.^[3]

Mokume-gane. (2015, March 18). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20:36, June 5, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mokume-gane&oldid=651954312

^{To learn more about Mokume Gane please visit:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokume-gane}

the work of Royston Upson