About Us

Brasselo makes solid unlacquered brass fixtures by hand. No plating. No hollow forms. No shortcuts that only show up years later.

Made by Hand, Not by Machine

Every Brasselo fixture passes through the hands of skilled metalworkers who learned the trade the long way, through apprenticeship, repetition, and decades at the bench. Bodies are cast and turned, joints are fitted, surfaces are hammered and finished by hand.

This is slower than manufacturing. It is also why no two pieces are quite identical, and why the hammered texture on a basin has a rhythm a machine cannot fake. When you look closely at one of our fixtures, you are looking at the record of someone's hands.

Why Solid Brass, and Why Unlacquered

Most fixtures sold as brass or brushed gold are not brass at all. They are zinc or a thin brass shell, electroplated with a coloured finish and sealed under lacquer. The finish is the product. When the lacquer wears through, and it always does, usually at the handles first, the piece is finished with it. It cannot be repaired, only replaced.

Brasselo fixtures are solid brass all the way through. Cut one in half and it is brass in the middle. That matters for three reasons:

Weight and feel. Solid brass has heft. A handle turns with resistance rather than rattling.
Repairability. A scratch in solid brass can be polished out. A scratch through plating cannot.
Lifespan. Brass fixtures installed a century ago are still in service. Plated fixtures are consumables.

We leave our brass unlacquered, with no sealant and no clear coat. That is a deliberate choice, and the one thing we ask customers to understand before ordering.

The Patina Is Not a Defect

Unlacquered brass is alive. Exposed to air, water, and the oils on your hands, it darkens and deepens over months into a warm, mottled bronze. High-touch areas, like the handle you reach for every morning, stay brighter because use polishes them. The result is a fixture that maps how your home is actually lived in.

Some people love this immediately. Others take a year to come round. If you want a fixture that looks identical on day one and year ten, unlacquered brass is the wrong choice, and we would rather tell you now.

If you prefer the bright look, you can restore it any time with a little brass polish. The patina will return. That reversibility is the point.