Gold Cabinet Pulls or Polished Bronze?

When is gold truly gold and when is it polished bronze? This is a tongue in cheek question and the answer reflects (pun intended) the high luster and jewel like appearance of polished bronze.
While we do occasionally gold plate our door hardware and while this clearly adds value to the item, for many, the appearance of gold is what is needed to create an accent to cabinetry.
Bronze is an alloy containing copper and this is what makes it a golden color. Copper and Gold are both elements on the Periodic table Cu and Au respectively and while they are both malleable and were used by early man they differ considerably in terms of scarcity and hence cost. A visit to https://www.jlab.org/ revealed that the “name Copper comes from the Latin Cuprum meaning “from the Island of Cyprus” which is where the Romans obtained the majority of their copper ore. The name gold comes from the Sanskrit word Jval and the Anglo-Saxon word gold.” Gold and bronze are both very soft mediums and in the case of silicon bronze tin and silicon are adding to copper to create a harder more durable alloy.

Frog Cabinet Pulls Polished Bronze

To create a highly polished surface the casting goes through 3 stages of progressively finer buffing;
First, we buff it using a high strength non-woven nylon disk on a mechanized buffing wheel, as the disk is not woven it is pliable and can buff irregular shapes. The material of the disk contains aluminum oxide a mineral that makes sharp very fine cuts into the surface of the bronze which helps to create consistent brush marks over the entire surface. We use a medium grit disk made by Standard Abrasives.
The piece is then hand polished using a 400-grit fine wet/dry sandpaper.
Lastly, we buff the pull on a cloth buffing wheel. Buffing compound is applied to the edge of the rotating cloth disk and when sufficiently coated the pull is pressed against the edge of the disk to create a high luster.

Silver cabinet pulls for a Luxury London Residence

Silver and gold are unusual choices for cabinet handles but when integrated into a credenza design they can become the finishing touch. Our first silver plated pulls were commissioned by interior Design Anna McPherson when she was with the international developer Candy & Candy. On that occasion we silver plated our dragonfly, geckos and frog handles. More recently Anna has used silver plating to add sparkle to our sycamore leaves for a custom credenza being made by the furniture craftsman, Thomas James in Worcester, England.

Plant cabinet knobs and pulls

While Martin Pierce designed these leaves to function as left and right pulls, each was made as a unique cabinet handle, reflecting the reality one finds in nature where no 2 leaves are identical.

The first sycamore leaves were made for the Ascot armoire, a limited edition piece that Martin Pierce Furnishings our sister company makes. The armoire as you can see is decorated with a scene of autumnal leaves rendered in gold leaf and glazed with layers of translucent pigment. The handles were simply buffed and left as natural bronze to provide a subtle compliment to the leafy scene.

To add depth to the bronze leaves we add a dark patina to the buffed metal and re-burnish select areas on the edges and higher sections and then we oil and wax the surface to help fix the finish.

For a more dramatic colorful finish we use a brown chemical patina which needs to be applied to a hot surface which we achieve by heating the piece with something akin to a blow torch.

Sycamore from our Plant Collection