The Brass Tacks: Beata Heuman’s Florentine Brass Handles
We recently found ourselves engrossed in a three-minute film showing the inner workings of a Florentine brassware workshop. Completely unromanticized, it showed strip lights flickering to life and casting light on battered work benches, welding torches being lit, and molten brass being poured into moulds. The resulting objects—solid brass handles designed and commissioned by Swedish-born, London-based designe Beata Heuman—were then filed and polished, each piece individually shaped and shined by the “bronzista”.
“We have been making brass handles in Florence for almost seven years,” Beata recently divulged to recipients of her newsletter. “It has been a real treat to go to the workshop and see them being made using traditional techniques and—in some instances—machines that are over 150 years old. My maker tells me that while Italy used to be full of these kind of outfits, it is now a dying industry. There are few left working in this way. I hope we can turn that around.”
Here we share Beata’s playful yet classic designs.
