Form Meets Function with Yucca Lane's Copper Coffee Pour Over
When DyAna Bush got married to her husband, Adam, six years ago and they were establishing their first home together in Tulsa, OK, she was inspired to make furniture.
“My taste was higher than what we could afford when we got married,” Bush says. “The first thing I built was our kitchen table. Then I made a couple desks, and I built our couch and our bed.”
A fan of the copper aesthetic, Bush incorporated the metal into a design idea she had for a kitchen staple.
A handcrafted copper coffee pour over by Yucca Lane.Photograph courtesy of DyAna Bush.
“My husband loves coffee and I hate the way an electric coffee maker looks,” Bush says. “I wanted to make something that looked really cute on the kitchen counter.”
Bush, who has a profession in the field of ministry and makes furniture as a side business, made a coffee pour over that has a glass with an arm made of copper, to hold a glass dripper in place.
“Copper is a beautiful material to work with,” she says.
The pour over offers Bush two primary benefits: satisfying her husband’s taste buds as well as her design taste.
“It’s a pour over that makes really good coffee but it also looks really nice,” she says. “It makes the same caliber coffee as Chemex — it’s the same science I suppose.”
Bush established a shop on Etsy, Yucca Lane, named after the street she lived on as a child, where she sells her pour overs in a variety of different materials.
“We have some with a wood base and the arm is copper and some with a concrete base where the arm is copper and some are made with copper all over,” she says, adding she also offers the arm in black steel. “By far, copper is the best seller.”
When someone asks her how to care for the copper portion of the pour over that she polishes with steel wool, she offers two options.
“If you like the really polished look, you can keep it shiny by polishing it with steel wool,” she says. “If you like the look of aged copper, don’t mess with it.”
Regardless of what she is building in her garage workshop, Bush has a solid comfort level with tools, thanks to her father.
“My dad is a home builder so I have an understanding of how tools work,” she says.
When Bush first started making the pourers a year ago, she soldered the various pieces of copper together. She uses copper piping that is 1/2” in diameter.
“It turns silver where you solder it and I like to keep it looking the same color,” she says. “Now I cut the copper myself, by hand, and then I use a construction adhesive to keep them together so they are still very secure.”
Bush aspires to have her own furniture line one day.
“I have ideas for a lot of different furniture and I love using copper, so I’m sure it will continue to be a part of my designs in the future,” she says.
Resources:
Also in this Issue:
- Carl Duzen: Copper's Transformative Effect
- Collage, Encaustics and Cold Wax: Sue Hohman’s Ways with Copper
- Kingfisher Designs: A Cauldron of Creativity
- Form Meets Function with Yucca Lane's Copper Coffee Pour Over
- Whistler and Contemporaries Featured in Reading Public Museum's Etching Revival Exhibition