The ‘mystery’ of copper vats
I recently had a stand @decorativefair at Battersea in London and I displayed a smaller than usual copper cheese vat (148cm across). I was fascinated by the amount of people that came on the stand and looked at it curiously, wondering what it was and what it was for.
Well, the answer today is that I sell them to both private individuals and garden designers and landscape designers as features for gardens – either as a lovely water feature with a simple mechanism put in place to create a little bubble of activity in the centre, or it can be simply left to calmly sit in the copper vat with the breeze creating a slight ripple.
I think these copper vats work in many positions in a garden landscape – whether down a long walkway of grass to create a longer distanced feature, perhaps with a yew hedge either side, or in the centre of a planted terrace, within a driving turning circle or simply as part of any area of an English country garden or town garden.
I have sold two copper vats previously to be ‘hot tubs’ on a garden terrace – now I would imagine they could be used as an ice bath as that is the latest health trend. However, my preference is for a simple water feature, providing a sculptural effect to your garden landscape with the lovely copper Verdigris patina that gently settles into them over time.
Most of the copper vats for this purpose are over 160cm in diameter, going up to around 178cm-180cm.
The vat that I exhibited at the Decorative Fair was a slightly smaller one at 148cm across and rather than being watertight, already has a drainage hole in place so that a garden designer could create a wonderful planter for a large and knobbly old Italian olive tree or perhaps a hornbeam.
Copper vats were historically used for industrial and domestic tasks requiring even heat, such as making cheese, boiling sugar cane, and heating water for bathing or laundry, particularly in the 19th century.
Copper vats were traditionally used in Europe, particularly France for making Alpine cheeses like Gruyère, and Comté. The copper helps in heating milk evenly and interacts with milk proteins to affect flavour and texture.
Weathered and Verdigris copper vats of a smaller size were used largely for making chocolate in – again, very much a French piece of history of the 19th century.