By Frank Ross
If you’ve ever seen a copper clad wastebasket or mailbox embellished with striking illustrations on copper foil, there’s a pretty good chance that it was created by Greg Hentzi, a copper artist who works from his studio in central Massachusetts where his family history is well established. His grandfather was a watchmaker who came to the U. S. from Switzerland, plying his craft at the Waltham watch company for over 30 years, and his father has a room in the Waltham museum that houses his personal collection.
With this background, you might wonder why Greg isn’t in the watch business. The answer is that he, as well as his father, took the wise council of his grandfather to heart. He said, “no Hentzi should work in a factory. He sat there, went blind making watches. So, my father became a salesman,” he explained.
Years later, Greg was a history major with a master’s degree in education, working on a master’s degree in history when he went ice fishing one winter day. He was joined on the ice by an old man he described as looking like Franklin Roosevelt. Sometime during the wait for a bite, his newly acquired companion commented that, “I believe the young people will save the country when Nixon gets through with it.”
Greg Hentzi decorated this mailbox with a drawing of dragonflies alighting on stalks of wheat.
Greg replied, “I’ve got two master’s degrees and I’m going bankrupt.” The old man asked him what he was doing, and he explained that he was trying to make lamps out of old wood planes. The old man’s response was simple in concept but difficult to follow. He advised him to become an artist because an artist can always make money.
The old man’s name was Henry W. Longfellow IV, a descendant of the famous poet who was obviously more skilled with his hands than the written word for he had been in the copper business for over 30 years starting in 1938, until he had retired. One day when these new fishing companions were through ice fishing Greg went over to Longfellow’s home where he was dazzled by a wide array of copper wastebaskets.
That first glimpse of these copper-clad creations was all it took to set the hook into a fisherman who was angling for a new career.
“Those wastebaskets were beautiful, but I didn’t think I wanted to go into that business. I went down to the local hobby shop and they had some copper, so I bought some copper foil and drew some pictures on it and went back up to see him. He asked me again if I wanted to go into the business and I said, yes, very much so. And that’s how I got the introduction.
After his first attempts at drawing on copper, Greg decided he should know something about art, so he took 14 art courses to improve upon his techniques. “Even if you have no talent you can develop a lot of skills in an art course. They can teach you how to draw. So, I started drawing wastebaskets with chickadees on them. If you do anything 10 times you begin to learn how to correct your mistakes. If you want to learn how to tie trout flies, they suggest you tie the same Royal Coachman 25 times and you’ll get better at it. My drawing skills got better and I was able to draw sailboats, then clipper ships and then the birds came in and I was able to draw the deer. So that’s how I got into it,” he explained.
From the basics of drawing images on copper, he progressed to learn about varying the colors through patinas, stains and plating. “With copper, you can antique it and make it different shades and different colors. I was very impressed with how I was able to silver plate it. You just came out with a very pretty object with it (copper) when you were done. So I’ve just gone on to draw 175,000 pictures in copper. It’s always a challenge, every time I draw one. You’ve got to be careful and watch what you’re doing,” he said.
For this box, Hentzi drew a flight of chickadees on pine boughs.
Regarding errors, which are inevitable, he advises, “ Sometimes you can put the copper foil on a piece of glass and use a piece of plastic to rub that line out, but you never really get rid of it totally. When you’re finished with the drawing you can antique it with a black patina and leave that area very dark and it doesn’t show up. When I look back on some of my first drawings they look pretty primitive. I think I’ve come a long way since the first couple of years. But even the first drawings were salable. I took them to stores and people bought them.”
After years of struggling he introduced his work to the Orvis catalog and the volume picked up. Soon his work appeared in all the major catalogs including Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops. He also got an order from Duck’s Unlimited for 3,800 black Labs on copper, but lamented that he was drawing those in his sleep. While those were the big orders, he did not start out that big. In 1973, when he was just starting out he was the creator, salesman and shipping clerk. Once he had enough baskets created, he would load his old convertible down with 100 baskets and hit the road. “I would make the rounds up the coast of New England coast, on the coast of Maine and Cape Cod, calling on small gift shops, and they would buy five or 10,” he said.
“Copper foil is kind of interesting because your forte is what you draw on the foil. I think a lot of people get put off because they can’t draw well and sometimes the foil has problems because the tool doesn’t slide as well. Or, you buy foil and sometimes it has this stain inhibitor on it, that makes the foil nice and shiny but then when you go to put your stain on, it won’t stick to it. Or, if the copper hangs around a long time before you use it, it gets tarnish on it and the tool won’t draw across it. It’s like trying to draw a Bic pen across sandpaper. When the copper foil is new, the surface is slick and it’s like drawing a pen across a piece of ice; it slips very nicely,” he said.
Through experimentation, Greg has discovered that soap is the best solution to combat the challenges of drawing on tarnished copper, but then he cautioned, “You have to wash the soap off.”
To keep up with the demand for his work Greg’s life revolves around copper. “I sit here and draw them every night. I can draw a copper picture in about eight minutes, onto the basket when I really get going. I can do about 15 or 20 drawings in a night from six until 11 and draw until my arm falls off. When I get 15 or 20 done, I go out into the shop in the morning and I polish those and lacquer them,” he said.
Although he has employed others at times, Greg now draws all of his creations by hand and then antiques them before wrapping them around the baskets or mail boxes. Once wrapped on mailboxes, he secures them in place with small rivets. On wastebaskets he uses a Pittsburgh fold to secure the copper but another technique he uses is applying clay to the back of the copper foil. The clay has two benefits. First, it maintains the raised elements of the repoussé drawings and the clay also helps the copper foil stick to the surface of the basket.
Although the downturn in the economy has altered some of his marketing outlets, Greg is now selling his wares on the Internet, but an artist who makes his living making waste baskets the reality is there is little time to waste. “When you have full-time work it’s hard to change very much if you know what I mean. Just in the last couple of years I’ve gone into big pictures measuring 2’x3’. I think if I had gone into those earlier I might have some of them selling them for a couple of thousand dollars apiece now. You can only get so much for a wastebasket or a mailbox,” he said.
Greg’s work can be found online at various sites, but he doesn’t have a website at this time. However, his work is so widespread that a search for copper mailboxes or copper wastebaskets will turn up many options to consider.
Meanwhile, if you’re considering your own artistic inclinations, copper foil is a wonderful medium and you’ll find the best quality at the best price at QuickShipMetals.com.
