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Sue recently created this collection of knitted wire forms for the Rosewood Sand Hill Hotel. Inspired by Sue's signature visual aesthetic and botanical shapes and forms.  Sue worked with a team from Sweeney Co. Art directed by award-winning interior architect and designer Nicole Hollis, to create these captivating one of a kind sculptural fiber pieces. 

We love to find out how our customers came across Arn’s work, and how they were introduced to mokume gane, and often the answer is that they found mokume through an interest in damascus steel pieces!

The clients who find us through damascus ask what the difference between it and mokume gane are, and the main difference is the materials. Damascus is made with steel, while mokume gane is typically either combinations of base metals (copper, brass, nickel) or precious metals (golds, palladium, platinum, silver). The techniques used to make the billets are similar, and there’s also some cross over in patterning methods.

Another big difference in the visuals of the craft is the color palette. Damascus is primarily what we think of as black and white, while Mokume allows for a range of colors because it can employ gold and other precious metals in all its colors. This also accounts for some of the difference in cost between Damascus and mokume.

Arn particularly likes playing with pattern welding, a technique often seen in damascus pieces. While popular traditional mokume patterns (what we call Twist and Woodgrain) have a more organic, flowing look to them, pattern welding has a repeating style. These patterns still have a beautiful handmade touch, but are visibly more regulated, some even resembling decorative tile! They’re also typically forged style patterns, in which pattern is created in the assembly and stacking of the metals while they’re being forged together, while a lot of mokume gane patterns are made with twisting and carving of the stock.

Some of Arn’s pattern welded work:

And then Arn loves to take this pattern welding concept and push it towards more free flowing forms, finding ways to push and pull the patterned pieces and create something more naturalistic, but still with a satisfying repetition of shapes. This can be seen in Arn’s recent Feather pattern ring, which was created with these damascus style techniques, applied in precious metals using our Firestorm palette (red gold, yellow gold, palladium and silver).

Arn’s work is unique in that he is pushing the boundaries between these art forms and exploring new ground with pattern in mokume gane. Pioneering within this craft is both incredibly time consuming and technically challenging but the results are worth the effort.

Susan Freda Art and Designers 

Flow is one of Arn's specialty forged patterns! This is one of his most complicated patterns, so he wanted to document some of the process to show you how he brings it to life. Come along on the journey from stock to ring!

Some assembly steps, those little rods will be the knots, and the flat stock will be the linear pattern running around the ring!

Here Arn is torch firing the stack to fuse everything together:

And then it's over to the press to compress the stack, check out that satisfying squash!

Here's what the stock for the ring looks like reduced down: 

And Arn continues to shape the stock into the dimensions for a ring:

Here he is etching the silver: 

And see the final ring here!