Copper culture

Edward S. Cooke, Jr.

Charger by Laurin Hovey Martin, ca.1900, copper. Gift of Matthew Robinson, Yale University Art Gallery, 1998.56.1.

Copper is the most common and extensively used non- ferrous base metal, a reddish ore found in veins on the surface of the earth or in easily excavated deposits. Among its many strengths are its malleability—it does not need to be reheated constantly while shaping it—and its workability. It can be raised with a hammer, bent into shape and brazed along a seam, or spun on a lathe. And copper can be combined with a range of other metals to make a variety of alloys, metals blended in the molten state, that possesses different strengths and advantages for use.

Until recently, copper was also inexpensive, the least costly of the base metals. Its place in the hierarchy of metals is clearly seen in its use for the lowest denomination coins, like the American penny.

Despite its cheapness (in some ways, because of it), copper’s versatility has made it a highly valued material. In South Asia, for example, metallurgical skill is deeply rooted. Craftspeople have worked copper and its alloys with great skill over thousands of years. We shouldn’t assume that artisans there have preserved traditions and techniques from centuries ago, but watching them at work does give insight into the continued intensive use of tools and hand skills.

In Tambat Ali (Copper Alley) in the city of Pune, the constant din of hammering is heard. The objects made there are mostly spun on a lathe against a wooden chuck, an industrial process, rather than raised on a stake. But artisans will then provide a hammered surface or chase the metal to produce embossed designs.

This work is done seated, with very little equipment. The maker sits on a low platform or cushion, about five or six inches off the ground. Either a short vertical steel stake set into a low stump or a long horizontal stake running underneath the cushion provides a polished working surface between the artisan’s legs. The maker moves the workpiece against the stake with one hand, hammers with the other, often using a foot to steady the work. In effect, the work is taking place right in the artisan’s lap.

The advantages of this are several. The artisan can move metal with precision, resting elbow on hip bone, ensuring the weight of the hammer (not muscle power) provides the force. The maker’s foot helps steady the work piece and, feeling vibration, can provide helpful biomechanical feedback. Sight, sound, and feel are interconnected. When British visitors to India in the 18th century saw people working on the ground in this way, they considered it inferior—these people were not “civilized” enough to stand at a bench. They did not understand that it’s just a different, in some ways superior, set of efficiencies.

Copper’s color and affordability also accounts for the metal’s fashionability during the Anglo-American Arts and Crafts period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It fit perfectly into the vernacular aesthetics of the period, an era known for the predominance of brown and green. Its soft earthy tone, not shiny like silver, was right at home alongside fumed oak, natural dyes, and matte ceramic glazes.

Tambat (coppersmith) hammering the top of a bumba (hot water heater), Pune, India, 2016. Photo by author.

With the period’s focus on product and process, many people wanted to learn metalsmithing outside of a professional apprenticeship system, in amateur classes or in schools and colleges. Due to its expense, silver was not an option for instruction outside the trade. If a student made a mistake, the waste could be melted down, but there would still be considerable loss. Copper was far more affordable—it was exactly during this time that mines in Arizona and several other Western states began to produce great quantities of the metal. Copper also shared many physical properties with silver—it could be hammered, engraved, pierced, chased, sawn, and soldered. In 1906 Augustus Rose, an instructor at the Rhode Island School of Design, wrote an instructional book, Copper Work, which provided many exercises for sheet copper of various gauges with detailed lists of needed tools and clear steps for the processes.

In more recent decades the economy of copper has shifted. This may be surprising, given the speed and efficiency of copper production today, as compared to past centuries. The extraction of the pure metal from the ore, once done in coal- or wood-fired bloomeries, is now accomplished using chemicals and industrial rollers. This has meant a major transformation for makers, who once had to hammer out billet or ingot copper, and now have uniform sheets that they can lay out, use shears to cut, and then shape. Yet, market forces have also undermined copper craftwork. The Arts and Crafts philosophy about vernacular metal has waned, replaced by a preference among individual smiths for shiny metals such as chrome-plated and stainless-steel wares.

Meanwhile, despite technological developments in processing, the cost of the metal has risen exorbitantly as copper has become increasingly in demand for the building industry (copper piping, wiring, electrical wiring, flashing, gutters, and downspouts), and for electronic equipment (wires, circuit boards, etc.). People are breaking into uninhabited homes to rip out copper pipes and wiring. Younger sons of South Asian artisans working with copper or copper alloys cannot purchase metal at a cost that ensures a profit and are leaving their familial traditions and pursuing different occupations. And in schools and craft workshops, there is little evidence of copper as an entry point into metalworking. Instead the focus has shifted to jewelry.

When we think about material intelligence, it’s important to keep these matters of economy in mind, and consider fluctuations across time. Never think of a material—copper or anything else—only in the present tense.

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Edward S. Cooke, Jr. is a scholar specializing in American material culture. With a focus on furniture, his practice explores the narrative capacity of objects. He is a founding co-editor of the Journal of Modern Craft, and at Yale, Cooke serves as the Charles F. Montgomery professor of American decorative arts. His most recent book, Global Objects: Toward a Connected Art History (2022), looks at the production, consumption, and circulation of functional aesthetic objects made from clay, fiber, wood, and metal.