How Do You Clean and Care for Your Botanical Metal Sculpture?

When you buy one of my Botanical Metal sculptures, they have been treated with a Renaissance Wax or a layer of clear matt varnish to help protect them from the elements. However, with time the metal can darken and change colour and you may want to let it do its thing and enjoy the natural colourisation or you may want to give it a clean

I have 3 types of sculpture, metal only, half metal half patina, and full patina, and depending on which one you have you will need to clean and care for it in a different way so before you go digging out your Brasso or Metal Cleaners carry on reading to find out how to clean and care for your botanical metal sculpture without the use of chemicals

How do you clean a copper or brass sculpture?

When the botanical metal sculpture is purely copper or brass then there’s no reason why you can’t use your Brasso or metal cleaners on it. However, these can be messy, smelly, irritate your skin and take a long time to clean the metal

So now when you buy a sculpture from me it will come with a Pro-Polishing Pad. These are an inexpensive and chemical free way of keeping your botanical metal sculpture in tip top shape. Just take the pad and in circular movements polish the surface with some pressure. The pad will turn black, and this is perfectly normal. The pads cannot be washed, use them until they are completely black and then throw away

You can then just leave the sculpture it as it is or you could treat it with a layer of Renaissance Wax by using a clean dry cloth and rubbing and polishing a tiny amount of wax on the sculpture.

See links at the end to find out where I buy mine from

How do you clean a half metal and patina sculpture?

When you buy a sculpture with an area of colour (patina) you will need to clean it slightly differently.

On the exposed copper/brass areas use the polishing pad provided as mentioned above and, on the coloured/patina area take a clean dry fluff free cloth or clean soft brush and just gently brush over the surface

DO NOT USE ANY CHEMICAL BASED CLEANERS AS THIS WILL REMOVE THE COLOUR/PATINA

How do you clean a full colour/patina sculpture?

When you have one of my Botanical Metal Sculptures with a full patina on it, it has been treated with a layer of clear matt varnish to help protect it. This will not however stop it from getting dusty so just take a clean dry fluff free cloth or soft brush and gently go over the surface to clean

DO NOT USE ANY CHEMICAL BASED CLEANERS AS THIS WILL REMOVE THE COLOUR/PATINA

No idea what I mean by Patina?

So, what is Patina? There are two types. One where you buy a pre-made mixed colour and you just paint the colour onto the surface of the metal or there are more chemical reaction-based methods that creates a thin layer of colour on the surface of the metal: copper, brass, bronze and similar metals.

Readymade chemicals can be bought or you can make your own. I decided to go down the homemade route as readymade ones can be pretty toxic. I use two methods; a tobacco and ammonia mix to create my green tones and a salt and ammonia mix for my blue tones

For more info on my green colours please read Metal Creations: How do I create the green colour on my botanical metal sculptures?

For more info on my blue tones please read Metal Creations: How I create the blue colours on my botanical metal sculptures?