Etched copper: the metal card with a personality of its own

Copper is a soft, warm metal — the opposite of stainless in almost every respect. Etched copper cards read as ancient rather than industrial, hand-forged rather than laser-precise, warm rather than cool. They also patina. A copper card handled every day for a year will darken along the raised areas and stay bright in the etched recesses, and if you're the kind of client who considers that a feature, this is the card for you. If it isn't, we'll steer you to lacquered copper (below) or to stainless.

The material is thinner and softer than steel — typically 24 gauge — so etched copper cards are lighter and more flexible than their stainless equivalents. They're also more susceptible to scratching, which is again either a virtue or a defect depending on your brand's relationship to time. Some clients spec a clear protective lacquer that locks the copper at its as-shipped color and prevents patina; others explicitly refuse the lacquer and want the card to age.

Design constraints unique to copper: etch depths are shallower than steel (copper etches faster and reacts more with the mordant), so extremely fine detail can over-etch and fill. We keep etched linework above 0.3mm as a default. Copper also silk-screens beautifully — a single deep-hunter-green or oxblood ink pass on raw copper is one of our favorite specifications, and pairs with brands whose visual language is warm and material-forward. Every copper run gets an oxidation test on a strike-off card so you can see approximately what a year of handling will do; a lot of clients see the aged sample and decide they want the patina, not the polish.