Alistair McCallum

Silver commissions from £135 to £15000

Mokume Gane is a traditional Japanese metalworking technique and has been practised for some three hundred years. The name mokume gane, when translated into English, means woodgrain metal or eye of the wood metal, referring to the patterns normally produced in Japan. The technique requires a sandwich of different metals normally silver, copper and copper alloys to be joined together either by defusion bonding or by silver soldering. I currently use six layers of silver, copper and gilding metal, with a thick backing sheet of silver which have been hard silver soldered together. Once the billet has been soldered it is then forged and milled into a sheet ready to be patterned. The pattern can be produced in a variety of ways but all involve breaking through the top layer of metal into the ones below. The desired pattern having been produced, the sheet is then milled to produce a smooth patterned sheet of metal ready to be fashioned.

1972 Foundation Studies, Teeside College of Art 1975 BA Silversmithing & Jewellery, Loughborough College of Art 1978 MA Silversmithing & Jewellery, Royal College of Art, London

Selected Recent Exhibitions:-

2001
Chelsea Crafts Fair, London, England
Goldsmiths' Fair, Goldsmiths' Hall, London, England
Wabi-Sasbi, Comtemporary Applied Arts, London, England

2000
Contemporary British Silver, Galerie Marzee, Nijmegen, Holland
Treasures of the 20th Century, Goldsmiths' Hall, London, England
Contemporary Decorative Arts, Selling Exhibition, Sotheby's, London, England

1999
25 Years of Contemporary Craft, Crafts Council Shop, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England
Meister Der Moderne Eine Sonderschau der 51 Internationalen Handwerksmesse, Munich, Germany

1998
Metalmorphosis. Tradition and Innovation in British Silver and Metalwork 1880-1998, Travelling Exhibition organised by the British Council in Association with the Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, 1998 & Brohan Museum, Berlin, Germany
Objects of Desire, Oxford Gallery, Oxford, England

1997
Table of Delights, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland
British Master Goldsmiths, Goldsmiths Hall, London, England
Six British Silversmiths, Gallery of Art, University of Northern Iowa, USA

1996
Design of the Times, One Hundred Years of the Royal College of Art, London, England
Living Silver, Crafts Council (travelling exhibition), England

1995
11th Silver Triennial 1995 Deutsches Goldschiedehaus, Hanau, Germany

The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, London, England The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England The Crafts Council, London, England North West Arts, Manchester, England Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland The Society of Contemporary Arts, London, England Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds, England Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead, England Brighton & Hove Museum, England Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Birmingham, England

1978
Travel Award to visit Japan, Royal College of Art

1979
Littledale Award, Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths
New Craftsman Grant, Crafts Council

2001
The Freedom of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths