Danaca Design Mokume Workshop Recap

What a joy to finally teach at Danaca Design in Seattle. It's an amazing space; a warren full of all the tools you'd need, separate spaces for a supply shop/library, machine room/patinas/polishing, spread out benches for plenty of room to work; an all-around great vibe. And a quite serviceable coffee shop two doors down, that was a bonus. Dana has built a studio/school/community to be proud of.
The studio was abuzz with positive energy, serious work, laughter, and the sound of hammering for a joyful five days. What a great group of students - one from the UK, the rest from California and Washington. Read on for lots of process and finished sample pics.

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Fusa-palooza - Happy students with their billets in bags (so much scrubbing not pictured here), putting bags in the kiln, trimming billet edges, forging the billets down, then finally rolling to sheet and rod.

Patterning begins! Cherry blossom in progress, filing and sanding, annealing, liver of sulfur patina, eager students have a first look at their finished patterning samples.

Great job! Metamorphic, direct hammer, and twist patterning from 8 different students shown here. I think this crop of students understood and were able to duplicate the cherry pattern better than any of my previous classes. Some even conquered the concept and used the principles to create new designs - especially the the 'peacock tree' center top, and the silver/copper fern bottom left. Part of their success was due to it being an in-person class - it was so much easier to keep an eye on their progress and make sure their hammer marks were deep enough before moving on to the next step.

The raffle included 4 t-shirt giveaways (as well as patterned mokume and even a cherry blossom petal stamp), but there was also a popular Mondobop pop-up shop! A great time was had by all.