MyCreative Ventures: Copper Tooling Sculptured Art

Copper tooling is an art sculpturing technique done by embossing designs onto copper foils. This form of art is rare as there are only a handful of people who still keep this dying art alive today.

Haji Osman Arshad and his son Haji Hisham Osman are among of the artist who still preserve this form of art. A retired teacher, Haji Osman learnt the art in the 70's from his friend and over the years, he honed and perfected the technique via various form of tools. He then passed on the knowledge to his son Hisham, who further improve it with better tools and preserving techniques.

Haji Osman Arshad and his son Haji Hisham Osman

Unlike water colour and oil painting, copper tooling is a labour-intensive hobby done truly out of love for art. The beauty of copper tooling is that it is hand-crafted and no two piece will be the same and each of it is one of its kind. One can imagine any designs possible and create a copper piece. The intended design on the copper has to be precise as no mistakes can be corrected as once an indentation is applied onto the copper foil, it starts to take shape.

Meticulous planning is required when starting a project. For beginners, one usually have their designs drawn onto a tracing paper before tracing the design onto the copper foil but for practitioners like Haji Osman and Hisham the designs are derived from images in the head and the design is quickly sculptured into reality.

Copper tooling requires specific tools to create and the end product needs to be polished and coated for a long lasting effect. Oxidization is the main culprit to copper as without coating the copper foil itself will slowly turn into dark brown and a greenish patina will appear. Polishing will undo the oxide on the surface but without a proper coating, it will turn brownish again after a few weeks. Coating usuallyconsists of a translucent resin based varnish to prevent oxygen from coming into contact with the surface, thus preserving the art piece for decades

It requires patience and careful planning when embarking to do a copper tooling piece. Interested parties can contact Hisham Osman at 017-2292951 or at his email - shamosman01@yahoo.com for any request for copper tooling work. Islamic verses can also be ordered depending on length.

*For Islamic or Quranic verses copper tooling artworks, price will varies depending on the length, intricacy of the calligraphy and the amount of copper foil needed in order to produce the artworks. (Current market price for copper foil is RM88 per square foot for 24 inches width and the stock is scarce)