The workshop

A single workshop. A single craftsperson.

Pour. File. Polish. Stamp. The four motions of a Birmingham brass piece, in one set of hands.

Every Winfield & Turner piece begins as a sand mould pressed from a hand-carved master pattern, fills with molten brass at 1,000°C, cools for an hour, comes out rough, and travels four feet across the bench to the file. From there: filed, polished, hand-struck with the W&T cipher on the back, hand-patinated (if Aged), or brushed and lacquered (if Satin), packed, posted.

The four motions happen at one bench, in one workshop, by one set of hands. No assembly line. No passing between operators. The piece you receive was poured, finished and marked by a single craftsperson who saw it through.

The bench

One steel bench. One vice. One sand-casting table. One polishing wheel. One small electric kiln for the patinating treatments. The same files and stamps used by the Birmingham brass trade since the Jewellery Quarter mechanised in the 1860s — not as nostalgia, as necessity. Modern CNC will not put the right hand-evidence on a knob.

The pour

Solid 70/30 brass, sand-cast in the traditional Birmingham method. Each pour fills four to six cavities, depending on the size of the piece. The brass enters the mould at around 1,000°C and is left to cool for an hour before the casting is broken out of the sand. The waste sand is recycled back into the next mould. The brass turnings and off-cuts return to the foundry as feedstock.

The file

Every casting comes out of the mould with a flash — a thin band of brass at the parting line that needs to be filed off by hand. This is the slowest part of the work. A knob takes thirty to forty minutes at the bench between filing, profile-checking, and the initial polish. A bar handle takes longer.

The cipher

Every piece is then struck on the back with the W&T cipher — a small two-letter monogram inside a heraldic shield, eight millimetres tall, recessed by six tenths of a millimetre. The cipher is struck from a single hand-cut master die that lives in a drawer in the bench. There are no copies of the master. The same die marks every Winfield & Turner piece, ensuring the cipher is identical at every scale.

The finish

Polished Unlacquered Brass leaves the bench bright. Aged Brass is taken to the kiln for a controlled patinating treatment, then waxed. Satin Brass is brushed against a fine-grit wheel, then lacquered with a single coat of low-VOC clear.

The pack

Each piece is wrapped in cream tissue, sealed with a small aubergine cipher sticker, placed in a kraft outer box with the cipher screen-printed on the lid, sealed with cream paper tape. A hand-signed insert card sits on top. The piece is posted from Birmingham — Royal Mail Tracked within the UK, DHL Express for international.

Visit, or write to the workshop

The workshop is in Birmingham. Designers and trade specifiers are welcome to visit by appointment — to see a pour, hold the finishes in hand, and talk through a specific kitchen.

Trade enquiries and project specifications welcome. We reply within two working days.