How Copper Wave Works came to be

Megan Brayshaw started the business in 2014 after leaving a fabrication shop where she had spent eight years making commercial metalwork. Mostly HVAC components and industrial brackets. Good work, steady pay, and almost no room to make decisions about how something should look or how long it should take. She bought a used English wheel, a planishing hammer, and about 40 pounds of scrap copper from a salvage yard, and started teaching herself to raise vessels in the evenings. The first few were embarrassing. The fourth one was not.

The name came from a piece she made in the second winter: a wide, shallow bowl with a rippled surface that caught light the way water does. A neighbour who stopped by the workshop called it a copper wave and the phrase stuck. By 2016 she had enough commissions to leave the fabrication job. The first big project was a set of three range hoods for a farmhouse kitchen renovation in Woodstock. The client had found her through a local building contractor who had seen the bowl on her kitchen table. That is still roughly how most work arrives. Word of mouth, a contractor referral, or someone who has seen a piece in someone else's home.

The workshop is a converted dairy barn on a back road outside of Montpelier. The forge, the anvils, the shears, and the English wheel all live in what used to be the milking parlour. It is cold in January and warm in July and the acoustics are terrible, which is fine because the hammering is loud anyway. Megan works alone, takes on about 30 to 35 commissions a year, and turns down work that does not fit the schedule rather than rushing a piece. If you want something by a specific date, say so upfront and she will tell you whether it is realistic. Most people appreciate that more than they expect to.