Bronze Plaques

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An Amazingly Old Tradition
 

Bronze plaques are an age-old tradition dating back thousands of years. Thanks to the men and women who have kept this tradition alive through the centuries, works of art that are more than 3,000 years old have been discovered, even under the sea, in excellent condition. Simply put, bronze does not rust or erode over time (it does corrode, though, but that is what gives it the “patina” which is usually a desirable effect). Barring an unusually – possibly even unearthly – force of some type, every bronze plaque ever created will withstand the elements for what could seem like eternity. Bronze plaques will all likely get dirty, of course, but a little elbow grease, soap and water, will wipe the debris away, and the plaque, itself, will stay intact – and even legible – for years and years to come.

Here are some other interesting, useful facts about bronze plaques.

Bronze plaques are not considered to be made of true “metal,” of course, because bronze is actually an alloy, a mixture of at least two different natural metals. In the Western world, bronze is typically composed of about 90 percent copper and the rest is usually tin (although different combinations of manganese, aluminum and silicon are also occasionally used). In the East, bronze is often made from only 60-70 percent copper. The different amount of copper does not normally result in noticeable differences in the bronze quality. They are usually a result of differences in the availability of copper.

Most bronze plaques are made with a method called sand casting. While sand casting is an age-old process, it is not quite as old as lost-wax casting which is the usual method of choice for creating statues and other bronze pieces that do not require lettering. Sand casting is a relatively new (remember that, for bronze art, even 300 years would be a relatively new) idea that makes the addition of lettering and graphic logos possible.

Designing a bronze plaque can be more complicated than meets the eye. Logos and lettering must be designed with lines that are large enough to be legible after casting, and that can sometimes be tricky. Very thin, short lines are simply not an option in bronze plaque designs. When designs with such lines are attempted, they will undoubtedly end up looking simply like blobs of brass. Most bronze plaque foundries can replicate corporate logos and other sophisticated designs on a bronze plaque, but doing that sometimes requires the services of a graphic artist who can change a digital art file from the commonly used “.jpg”, “tiff” or other pixel-based formats to a line-based “vector” format.

While many bronze plaques are designed with corporate logos or other custom graphics, bronze plaques are also designed to include a wide variety of pre-drawn emblems. Most foundries have a healthy supply of these emblems available, often printed in catalogs through which customers can browse. When looking through these emblems, customers are sometimes confused about exactly how the piece will appear on the plaque. Here is a rule of thumb for that: all black areas of the picture will appear raised on the plaque, and white areas will be a bronze background.