Rings

When I was a kid, two of the big employers in my hometown were Sealed Power piston rings and Anaconda Coil and Wire.  Chuck's mom, two doors down, did piecework for Anaconda at home, wrapping wire strands into loops and tossing them into a cardboard box while she watched TV bingo on Channel 54.  So I got used to seeing circular metal objects from an early age.

But not like these.

We just ordered two of these today, from a metalsmith named Andrew Nyce.  It's a metal technique called mokume gane (Japanese for wood grain), formed by layering different metals under huge heat and pressure, then twisting the resulting bar into interwoven curves.  They're pretty remarkable things.

We'll have them in a month or so, and will post photos of the real things once we have them.  In the meantime, this photo from the Andrew Nyce website will suffice (this is the pattern called Canyonlands; there are many others).