What Is Patinated Bronze?

One of the big decisions you’ll need to make when having feet, hands and fingerprints cast is what kind of material you’d like the cast to be done in.

There are various options available, including silver, gold, bronze and even glass… but one of the most popular has to be bronze, in large part because you can customise the finish as you’d like, whether you want something polished or whether you’d like to see a patina of some kind.

Patinated bronze is always a wonderful choice, a process that can occur naturally through the oxidation process when the material is exposed to air and moisture, leading to all sorts of beautiful and unique textures, colours and finishes.

However, foundry patination can be carried out deliberately, with chemical compounds like carbonates, sulphides and oxides applied to the bronze to enhance the visual appeal of the sculpture in question.

Patina solutions can be sprayed or brushed onto the cast, or it can be fully immersed in the solution, so that the bronze reacts with the chemicals contained within to create all sorts of stunning colours, from reds and blues to greens and browns.

Heat and oxidation can also be used to further change how the patina looks, producing even more unique and interesting colour variations.

Once the desired patina has been achieved, different finishing techniques and treatments can be applied, including etching, buffing and polishing, resulting in something beautiful, meaningful and entirely one of a kind.

If you want your patinated bronze appearance to last, it’s advisable to keep your sculptures and casts inside. Otherwise, it’s likely that you’ll see weather exposure cause even more patina fluctuations. 

However, many people enjoy seeing their sculptures change and evolve over the years - so if this sounds like something you’d be interested in, put your cast outside and see what happens!