Hadar's Bronze and Copper Clay

Although I ordered bronze and copper clay powders from Hadar Jacobson before I left for Italy, I didn't have time to play with them. Luckily that was one of the things we did in the workshop.


I can say that Hadar's bronze clay has a very different consistency than Bill Struve/Rio Grande's bronze clay. It's very creamy feeling, not gritty and prone to cracking like the Rio clay. It sculpted beautifully and had a much longer working time. Once dry, however, it did not carve so nicely as the Rio clay. Then it felt extremely hard, gritty and brittle. The two also seemed to give different patinas, even when fired in the same load of carbon. When mixed, this could be used to give varying colors to different parts of one piece. Very interesting to think about applications of the relative assets of the two different clays.


The copper clay was quite similar in the wet state to its cousin bronze clay. It fired to a bright red patina, but brushed to that classic copper penny color. My flower piece broke upon transporting home, so joins need more attention. I'm pretty excited about using copper clay to make findings and beads to complement my electroformed beads.