They say that holding a piece of copper is like holding a piece of history. Often kept in families for generations, kitchenware crafted from copper lives many lives after it's first sold in a store and hung above a stove.

As functional as it is attractive, copper gleams and looks at home on the stovetop and as a centrepiece. Chefs love and trust it for its responsiveness; it heats fast and evenly, and retains that heat evenly. In an environment when control is everything, copper is too. A copper pot with a 2 – 3mm thickness will be critical members of your kitchen, and the generations that come after you.

It was Julia Child who introduced millions of home cooks in Western countries to copper. The American author ofMastering the Art of French Cookingpurchased her first (of many) pieces from Dehillerin, the legendary kitchen supply store on Rue Coquillière in Paris. (Its stamp is so recognisable it was found on the side of a copper bain-marie recovered from the wreck of the Titanic.)

"I was thunderstruck, Child wrote of her first visit to Dehillerin, by the scale and volume of the "big shiny copper kettles, turbotières, fish and chicken poachers, eccentrically shaped frying pans, tiny wooden spoons and enormous mixing paddles, elephant-sized salad baskets, all shapes and sizes of knives, choppers, molds, platters, whisks, basins, butter spreaders, and mastodon mashers."

It’s not only the functional products forged from copper that have been popularised over the last two centuries. In their forges located in Ravina, a town near Trento in Northern Italy, Navarini Rame produces both kitchenware and decorative objects using the same tools techniques and care that founder Pierino Navarini began exporting to the world in 1958. 

Now under the creative direction of his three sons, the brand’s meticulously handcrafted pieces outfit the kitchens of professional and home cooks the world over.

Words by Brodie Lancaster @brodielancaster