Bronze fountain restoration is one of our specialties. Furthermore, we create and recreate fountains from historical images for public spaces. Consequently, we created the fountain to your right for the Washington Square Advisory Commission of Newport, Rhode Island. We based our construction on photographs from the Newport Historical Society. Our project was part of the successful drive to revive Washington Square as the living center of our Newport community. You can see the fountain being cast on our YouTube channel. Contact us to discuss a fountain for your community.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, David and Goliath, says Brown University’s campus ‘…might be the most beautiful college campus in the United States.’

As part of our bronze fountain restoration, we researched the little bear fountain. As a result of our research, we discovered that this casting was created in 1930 at a foundry in Florence, Italy. The tradition of these foundries is to create traditional bronze patinas. These are a consequence of aging, and develop into variegated green copper carbonate or, ‘Verdigris,’ or by the general term, ‘Patina’ – the naturally developing surface which characterizes almost all outdoor historic bronzes.

Previously, at some time in the past 50+years, entirely covered with brown paint. The nose was painted red. The water spout, which had originally come from the bear’s nostrils, had been cut off and remade to spout from the center of the pool.

Our challenge was to bring the sculpture back to life as a compliment to the campus, with great attention to the campus aesthetic. We removed the graffitti, recreated what we surmised was the original patina, and re-plumbed the fountain.