The same piece, with the polish held back.

Antique and Regular are the same copper, drawn and pushed the same way. What changes is the polishing stage. On a Regular finish the whole surface is brought up bright. For pieces with an antique finish, the polish is held back in the recesses to leave the depth darker.

The effect is depth. The relief reads further off the sheet, and the piece looks older and heavier than the same composition finished bright. It is slower work — the polish has to be taken exactly as far as it should go and no further, by hand, area by area — and an antique finish is twice the price of the same piece done regular.

It suits busy compositions with a lot of pushed detail, where the recesses do the drawing. On a simple, open figure there is less for the dark to sit in and the difference is smaller.

Nearly every piece in the collection is offered both ways. Choose the finish on the piece itself — see the collection — and the price updates as you switch.

Older framed copper panels come in with a few recurring problems: moisture that has got in behind the mount and marked the sheet, paint that has flaked where the frame leaked, a backing board gone soft, or a frame that has sprung at the corners.

The work is opening the frame, cleaning and drying the panel, retouching paint only where it has genuinely been lost, replacing the mount and backing, and reframing with new glass. Retouching is kept to the minimum — a restored panel should still read as its own age, not as a new piece.

Send photographs of the front, the back and any damaged area, and the piece's rough dimensions. Quotes depend entirely on condition.