Brass Witch

Brass Witch accessories was founded by Met Opera Hornist Barbara Jöstlein Currie in 2022. The inspiration behind the idea came about from a trip to the Musée des Artes et Métiers, an industrial design museum founded in 1794 in the 3rd arrondissement in Paris. In its gift shop, Barbara bought a pencil which had a small magnet embedded within the cap.

At a Met rehearsal in early 2020, she discovered that the pencil would stick to the stand, but the magnet wasn’t strong enough to hold, so it would spiral slowly down the stand landing on the floor. This was certainly entertaining, but more than that, lightning struck.