Arn's Blog

Woodgrain vs Twist, our two most popular patterns! What are the differences, what characterizes each, and which one is right for you?

At Arn Krebs Mokume we offer the unique opportunity to customize and design an heirloom piece of jewelry within our mokume aesthetic. We are so honored to create these pieces for our customers and to work together to build truly special and one-of-a-kind pieces of work.

We offer a few different options for the finish of your mokume gane ring, and each offers a different look and quality. One of these options is oxidation, where the silver layers in a ring are darkened to increase the contrast between the metal colors! It’s great for those who want a bold, high contrast look, and makes the patterning stand out more.

To offer some loose guidance for you, we’ve created this scale to show all of our palettes side by side and the range of contrast between them. All the palettes here are shown in the satin finish so you can see what the palettes look like with no additional assistance from etching or oxidizing. 

Essentially mokume can be broken into two categories, base metal and noble metal mokume.  The highest quality mokume which is the only combination we feel is suited for rings is made from layered noble metals.