Playing with Hadar's Bronze and Copper Clay

A few of us have been taking classes with one of the premier metal clay artists, Hadar Jacobson, for the last few weeks. She is not only amazingly talented, she is also an incredible teacher! Moreover, she developed her own line of bronze and copper clay and she is very generous in sharing her invaluable experience in working with those clays on her blog.


A lentil I made in Hadar's class

We started playing with the Rio Grande pre-packaged BronzClay and were very frustrated with how varied the clay consistency from package to package. Rio's BronzClay was also very finicky - the actual time when it was in "perfect" working consistency was very short. It also needed to be chilled frequently.

We almost gave up working with this new metal clay!

Then we discovered Hadar's (and her newest copper clay)!

Here are some of the reasons why we love Hadar's bronze clay:
• It is in POWDER form, thus has an unlimited shelf life.
• Its powder form allows YOU to get the exact consistency every time by adding distilled water. It only takes a few minutes to do so.
• It's much more pliable and surprisingly malleable!
• It doesn't get brittled and dried as quickly as BronzClay
• It doesn't need to be chilled!
• It doesn't need lavender water!
• It stays in "perfect" working consistency for a long time.
• It doesn't need slip.
• You can combine her bronze clay with her copper clay! See her blog for some of her beautiful pieces!

Last but not least, she fires multiple kiln loads a week and has ironed out the firing schedules to ensure that YOU don't have to do the firing testing. All the information, again, is on her blog.


I love the patina on this simple pendant!