There’s an anecdote Chris Wilson likes to tell about a door-to-door salesman who showed up at his family’s house in Fremont, California, sometime in the 1980s with a cleaning product to demonstrate. He spritzed a rag, buffed a brass doorknob, and in one efficient swipe erased decades of patina. “I’d never really seen my mom that level of angry,” says Wilson, design and development manager for Newport Brass. “He destroyed years of patina in a moment.”
The aged brass finish of the Taft Pull-Down Kitchen Faucet and Prep/Bar Faucet matches the classic bin pulls and provides a warm, gleaming counterpoint to the inviting soft blue cabinetry of this kitchen.
COURTESY OF NEWPORT BRASSIt’s a small story about a big idea: that certain things get better with age, and the worst thing you can do is interrupt the process—or stand in its way. Newport Brass was founded in 1989 and they’ve spent four decades quietly creating faucets, fixtures, and fittings with just that kind of longevity in mind: every piece handcrafted and finished in Southern California; every component solid brass, built for permanence, not trends. The company has never really advertised—its reputation spread organically through designers who discovered it and kept coming back.
In an era when trend cycles accelerate and Instagram-idealized renovations date themselves in five years, Newport Brass’s credo—buy well, buy once, age gracefully with your home—feels almost revolutionary.
The Aylesbury Tub and Hand Shower Set in aged brass hints at Victorian refinement while adding detail to this modern-yet-luxurious bath designed by Lindzey Lawler.
AUSTIN LARUE PHOTOGRAPHY
In a bath by designer Lilly Taylor, the Ithaca Wall-Mount Faucet in aged brass takes center stage, echoing the warm gleam of the mirror and sconces above.
Caroline SharpnackThe Case for Brass
Brass is durable, corrosion-resistant, easy to machine into almost any form. But for Newport Brass it’s also a signifier of quality and integrity. As other manufacturers quietly substituted brass for zinc, zinc for stainless steel, stainless steel for substrate plastic—each swap a sacrifice of quality in the service of margins—Newport Brass simply refused. “When you move a brass handle, it just feels right,” Wilson says. “There’s beautiful weight to it.”
Each element is made and finished by hand by artisans at the Newport Brass factory in Santa Ana, California.
COURTESY OF NEWPORT BRASSThat devotion to brass is not at all limiting in terms of style, however. With 22 finishes—from polished chrome to satin gold to matte black—a faucet can feel sleek and modern, quietly vintage, or reassuringly traditional in style. “The form tells you one thing,” he says. “You add the finish, and suddenly it says something different,” says Wilson. “Ultimately it’s that combination, along with the surrounding architecture, that makes it feel right.”
The purest expression is what the company calls its “living finish”: unlacquered brass left bare to the air, the water, the oils from your hands, darkening and deepening into a rich patina. “You buy it because it’s beautiful today, but it’s going to be even more beautiful a year from now, five years from now,” Wilson says. “It’s the embodiment of how you’ve interacted with the piece.”
The Chesterfield collection (which includes the wall-mounted Pot Filler shown here) was inspired by sculptural baluster forms from 19th-century metalwork.
AMY LAMB/NATIVEHOUSE PHOTOGRAPHY
The graceful gooseneck curves of the dual Taft Widespread Faucets in a French gold finish complement this bath’s gracious, old-world feel. The Tub & Shower Single-Function Shower Head has a clean, refined presence.
COURTESY OF NEWPORT BRASSMade by Hand, Designed to Endure
At the Newport Brass factory in Santa Ana, California, brass arrives as raw material and leaves as a finished fitting—machined, assembled, polished, and hand-finished by artisans on site. “This is a craft business,” says Wilson. The design process is equally unhurried: Collections begin with a single catalyst of inspiration—a gas lantern, a garden, a knob, a temple door—and proceed through months (or even years) of sketching, discussion, and refinement. The guiding philosophy is restraint. “Beauty comes out in the simplicity of form,” Wilson says. Collections like Astor, with its Art Deco proportions, which have been in the line since the brand’s founding—alongside the Victorian-inspired Chesterfield or the minimalist East Linear —have endured because they have what Wilson calls “presence”: the visual weight to hold their own in any room, any decade.
The goal is what Wilson calls “a very long love affair”—with a fitting that is distinct and unique, and still right, fifteen or more years on.
In a bath that melds old-fashioned elegance and luxe materials with a clean-lined scheme, the Astor Collection, with its Deco-inspired spouts and classic Victorian cross-handle faucets with porcelain inlays, matches the mood perfectly.
COURTESY OF NEWPORT BRASSFive Ways to Ensure a Timeless Kitchen or Bath
1. PICK IT UP
Seriously—lift it. A solid brass fitting has a heft that zinc alloys and plastic simply can’t fake. Weight is the fastest and most honest indicator of material quality in this category, and nothing substitutes for holding the real thing in your hand.
2. LET THE FINISH DO THE WORK
With Newport Brass’s 22 finishes, the rules about mixing styles dissolve. A contemporary silhouette in unlacquered brass reads traditional; a classic cross-handle in matte black goes thoroughly modern. The finish is a key element.
3. LOOK FOR A FORM WITH HISTORY
If you can’t imagine a version of this faucet existing fifty years ago, think twice about it. The silhouettes that last tend to be rooted in a design movement, a material logic, a moment in history—rather than just invented for the current market. Novelty dates. Lineage doesn’t.
4. EMBRACE THE LIVING FINISH
Unlacquered brass isn’t just a finish—it’s a material still becoming. It deepens and mellows with use, developing a patina that is entirely, specifically yours. In ten years it will be even more beautiful than it is today.
5. SCALE TO YOUR SPACE
A soaring gooseneck that sings in a farmhouse kitchen looks absurd in a petite powder room. Newport Brass offers configurations at every height and reach—the goal is for it to feel inevitable, not imposed.
Industrial design meets a rustic earthiness in the Heaney Pull-Down Kitchen Faucet and Pot Filler in a rich, oil-rubbed bronze finish.
COURTESY OF NEWPORT BRASS