Our Black Walnut Branch Weathervane was commissioned by the owners of a black walnut farm in Georgia. They were renovating one of the farm’s buildings and wanted an original weathervane to top the cupola. This was an interesting sculpture piece to design and for our artisans to craft. It is a copper vane in both silhouette and swell bodied styles. The leaves are in silhouette, meaning a single layer of copper that has been cut and hammered to create the shape, texture, and depth. If you look closely you will see that some of the leaves are slightly overlapping with the adjacent leaves. This was done to add tensile strength, and to create just a bit more continuous surface to catch the breezes. The stem is copper sheet wrapped on copper rod, and the nuts themselves are two sided, swell bodied. Because this weather vane would be viewed among actual black walnut trees, optional gold leafing was requested for the black walnuts and the veins of the leaves. This worked out to great effect. As the copper of the leaves weathers and darkens these bright golden details will be eye catching.

There are six Lucky Pennies inside the walnuts, commemorating important years in this family and for this farm. There is also an inscription on the vertical copper tube with family name, farm name and date—thereby creating a wonderful family heirloom, and adding value to it as original American Art.