Why Copper and Enamel?
by Ed Appleton – 19.10.25
You can’t know that something will work before you build it for the first time.
How It Began
In the comments of one of my YouTube videos, someone asked how I got into this craft: why copper & enamel? I suppose it is quite niche in the grand scheme of things, so I’d like to take the time to see if I can explain it; to myself as much as to anyone else.
I’m aware of the power of language and narrative. So, I usually resist the urge to pigeonhole myself, or to create a story that’s too neat for the contradictory and fleeting nature of reality. It’s too easy to tell a story that changes from audience to audience.
My creative path feels deeply personal. These chosen materials (copper and enamel) have emerged through experimentation, through listening to those creative inner whispers, and, yes, through a conscious decision to impose a kind of specialisation on myself.
Finding Focus
All of this self-discovery has built more momentum in the past couple of years, as I’ve given myself more time and attention to allow my artistic truth to emerge as naturally as possible. The motivation for this? Let’s save that one for another time.
I’ve always been a nomad of experience. I’ve explored many ideas and instinctively felt that generalisation has its own value. Still, I’d grew too consumptive. I wasn’t listening closely enough to those whispers urging me to let myself be myself. But, I was faced with the question of what it was that I wasn’t allowing? I think I had become creatively closed.
Why didn’t I follow through on my more rebellious dreams when I was leaving adolescence? Through circumstance or choice, it doesn’t matter now as it’s passed. The fact is, I now have a family I care for deeply and feel utterly grateful for. There’s no going back. It has never been convenient or easy to pursue a craft beyond the early, exciting phase of experimentation. Yet I always return to making, repairing, and understanding things that I don’t fully understand; and creating with metal and enamel always feels like coming home.
The Allure of Enamel
Enamel as a craft or art form has come in and out of fashion. We find it in archaeological digs as treasure, or as part of incomprehensibly valuable burial rites. And we also find it in its cheap, neglected form, abandoned in the back of flea markets.
Enamel pieces have been made in home kilns by hobbyists and by master craftspeople: those who created the achingly beautiful Meiji-era Japanese cloisonné. Like anything, enamel exists on a spectrum.
I love the magic of enamel, where powder becomes glass. Its colour doesn’t fade as ink or paint can over time. It keeps its brilliance. Unlike capitalism’s turbo-charged urging to consume and discard the new, enamel can hold true.
Yes, it can crack if dropped, but when stabilised, it is surprisingly resilient. In fact, I made a whole video about stabilising enamel with counter-enamel just as we need to balance ourselves to avoid psychological fracture.
Why Copper?
One reason I use copper is pragmatic. It’s affordable and abundant compared to other precious metals. I don’t want to pay or make others pay a premium for rarity. Nor do I want to contribute to mining our planet’s diminishing resources. As I travel on this creative journey I always have one eye focused on that side step I will find into using more sustainable materials. However, see above, I have spent too long finding reasons not to do things, so I must make some allowances.
Copper’s surface beauty must be discovered rather than assumed. It’s unpredictable, abstract in its patina, stable yet ever-changing. With time, dark copper shades, blues and greens emerge through its reaction with the world around it.
What else becomes more colourful with age?
Like people, copper is both hard and soft. It oxidises, sometimes unpleasantly, but this can be repaired. It stains, bends, and transforms with the right treatment. Carl Jung didn’t see midlife as decline, but as the beginning of life’s second half, when the true inner self begins to unfold. That idea comforts me. It reminds me of older people who seem utterly at home in their own skin.
Creativity, Faith, and the Muse
Have you ever heard the word pareidolia?: seeing faces or figures in clouds or trees? Or the idea of a leaky filter, where some of us make creative connections between seemingly disconnected things? These are, for me, examples of artistic seeing.
The stories we tell, about the patterns we think we observe, create our lived reality. Heuristics can lead to harmful biases, but they can also remove the need for us to think consciously about every little action and decision. When applying rationalism to non-rational things we risk falling into relativism; and from there, cynicism. Creativity, on the other hand, requires faith, sometimes an instinctive response, a root from which to grow skill and expression.
There’s an act of faith in all creativity, and in building anything at all. You can’t know something will work before you make it. As Steven Pressfield reminds us, the artist’s job is simply to do the work: to face Resistance, show up for the Muse, and build, regardless of outcome.
Returning to the Work
The truth is, I feel drawn to many things: music, drawing, painting, printing, woodworking, gardening, mechanics. The list is endless. I’ve always had a powerful urge to create but an equally strong fear of committing, perhaps of being exposed to criticism. Still, I’ve learned that unless you act, nothing is made. “I know who I am when I see what I do” (David Epstein).
For some reason, copper and enamel have, over time, become a familiar anchor, and a way of directing all other ideas back to something tangible. Yet, on a more simple level, I work with these materials because I love them. They are alluring, baffling, magical, and deeply satisfying.
Committing to their limitations forces me to develop skill, which in turn allows me to serve the Muse more faithfully. As Pressfield says, “the work itself is what invites inspiration’” Through showing up, honestly, I’ve uncovered joys and ideas I could never have planned or anticipated.
A Practical Ritual
I have thought a lot about the following statement, because I have thought-myself out of doing so many things, because I see so many reasons why I might fail. I think, success pursued directly as an end in and of itself becomes a trap. It will only come in its truly satisfying form, if it comes, through devotion to the work itself. It might not come, so you might as well feel proud of yourself for going at it in a genuinely wholehearted way.
One thing that keeps me grounded is keeping a simple weekly log. I note plans, daily actions, reflections. Sometimes it’s as small as a thought jotted down. At the week’s end, I review, and each month I take stock by reflecting on what went well, what didn’t, what’s next. Would you find it useful to see the framework I have ended up sticking with?
It’s a ritual that has helped to hold the show on the road.
Try It Yourself
Why not try it? Start small with yourself. I’m no expert, but this creative practice as I describe it is not exclusive to the materials I find myself preferring. For me, copper and enamel have proven both grounding and alive.
When you take time to sit and meditate, write whatever comes to mind and then it wander, run, walk, or whatever, what emerges in your flow state? What do your inner whispers say? I would suggest that you follow a few. Then let them go. Return again, and again.
Writing this has reminded me of a few books which I have found inspirational on my creative journey, especially when I have been doubting myself:
– The War of Art – Steven Pressfield
– The Artist’s Way – Julia Cameron
– Range – David Epstein
– Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott
– The Creative Act: A Way of Being – Rick Rubin
– The Pathless Path – Paul Millerd