Mokume Gane was developed in Japan about 300 years ago. Here, the Zen Buddhist and Shinto religion were based around the cult of the sword and was accepted as a way of life and also the path to spiritual enlightenment. The importance of the sword raised their metal techniques to a highly developed art form and the invention of mokume gane one of the astonishing techniques developed by the Japanese craftsmen.
It was not until the early 1970s when Eugen and Hiroko Pijanowski of the United States studied the traditional technique of making mokume gane in Japan. For many years they passed on their knowledge through lectures and workshops to western craftspeople which generated an explosion of artistic experimentation.
Mokume Gane is created by hand only and in a world that relies vastly on machine produced objects, it has become something of a rarity that can only be found in jewellery workshops that hand forge.