Our Patinas

Although almost all of our pieces are made of brass - for its strength and rigidity - occasionally we use copper to provide accents of color. We rarely polish the copper, because it tarnishes far too readily, but pure copper can be made to yield some colors its alloy, brass, cannot. Simply heating copper till it glows, then allowing it to cool, yields speckled browns and blacks with small accents of other colors; we refer to this as brown copper, but it should not be confused with brown patina. Less heat can give delicate iridescent effects (usually in oranges, pinks, and yellows, but with occasional blues), but we rarely use these.

More commonly we paint the surface with a thin solution of borax, then heat the copper to glowing, to give the dramatic, glowing effects we call red copper. Following the lines of the brushstrokes or patterns of evaporation of the borax solution, there may be firey swirls of orange and red, or the piece can take on more solid colors from flame red to oxblood, or there may be combinations of these in patches and veins and marbling, sometimes with burnt black as well. Most often red copper is used as small accents, but occasionally it is a main color element in a wallpiece.

These colors are even harder to control than most of our patinas, so we cannot predict what will come out when attempting to use them in designs.

In late June 2005 we started adding brown patina to brown copper to make brown-on-brown copper. Apart from further confusing the nomenclature, this provides a new, deep but textured brown color, which is somewhat more under our control than plain heat-treated brown copper.

Note that we do not make our vases out of copper. These colors are only available in wallpieces, modular wallpieces, inset sides of tables, and the inset panels of copper inset menorahs.