Pans, pots and kettles hammered over a stake on Bath Street, tinned inside, and re-lined here for as long as you cook with them.
See the rangeEvery pan starts as a flat disc of 2.5 mm sheet copper and gets its shape from a hammer and a steel stake, not a press. It takes a few thousand blows to raise a 24 cm sauté pan up off the flat, and the work-hardening that comes with them is half the reason the wall still holds its shape in twenty years. Between rounds the disc goes back into the fire to soften, and we planish the marks even rather than polish them away. The lining is tin, wiped on by hand over the same fire until it takes. That is what stands between an acid sauce and the metal, and it wears the way the sole of a good shoe wears. When it goes thin, post the pan back to Bath Street and we re-line it for a fraction of what it cost new. Copper moves heat about twenty times quicker than stainless and roughly twice as quick as cast iron, and it drops that heat just as fast. Cast iron will hold a temperature through a power cut; copper follows your hand. Two and a half millimetres is the point where there is enough metal under the food to spread a gas flame flat across the base, without the pan becoming something you dread lifting off the shelf.
Workshop and shop, 14 Bath Street, Montagu 6720. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 09:00 to 16:00. Phone 023 614 2087 — we answer between hammer blows, so try twice.
