*In even more excruciating news, it turns out you are not wrong at all. I'm wrong. In that, there is no wrong way to say 'patina'**, unless you are opposed to the American accent. The Oxford English Dictionary lists both "PAT-uh-nuh" and "puh-TEE-nuh" as pronunciations, for British and US English respectively. I still think Pateena sounds like a reality TV contestant.
**I take this back. Pronouncing it with a long 'i', as in, "pa-TAI-na", would be very wrong.
OK, end of the asterisks section. We know how to say "patina" the fancy way, now. (The British way is always the 'fancy' way, isn't it?) But I still like to think about what is patina and what is pateena. I lie in my bathtub and look at all the bits where the enamel has chipped away, and the strange rusty scrape marks in odd places, and the brown limescale stain streaking down from where the shower head leaks, and I tell myself... 'it's okay, this isn't gross (it is gross) – it's just pateena.' I lie there soaking and think about other parts of my life where pateena is a useful concept. The coffee stains and crumbs and drool on my shirt? 'I'm not a grub. That's just the pateena of my shitshow of a day.' The unsightly dirt patches worn into the lawn where the kids play soccer? 'That's the pateena of family life.' It's just... there really are an awful lot of dints and scrapes and marks on this bathtub. It almost seems weathered, somehow?
But back to patina: this is a film, or a sheen, or an otherwise lived-in layer on an object's surface. It tells the story of something – something with age under its belt, something that's seen a few things, something that has matured with grace. Patina is what makes the Statue of Liberty green: the thirty odd tonnes of hand-shaped copper that coat the sculpture¹ has oxidised, in a natural chemical process² that will preserve the metal for hundreds – perhaps thousands – of years. The statue was brown in 1886, when it was first unveiled. Twenty years later it had turned green, and people didn't know what to do, and the authorities were making lots of noises about how they would paint it brown again, until a newspaper reporter asked the Vice President of the country's largest bronze and copper manufacturer what he thought of that idea, and the professional copper guy made very clear that to do anything, anything at all, to this protective transfiguration would be a grotesque act of vandalism! So they didn't. And still haven't. And still she stands resplendent and unrusting in that harbour, her patina growing with every whip of wind and salt and rain, effervescing a crystalline blue-green sheen that has witnessed a century and a half of the American experiment.
So there's a story about patina, but the point is that patina tells a story.
You might get a better sense of this by watching Antiques Roadshow. A punter brings in a beautiful old wooden table for valuation. It's centuries old, but incongruously gleaming, strangely shiny-smooth. "What have you done to it?" the host asks, tentatively. Then comes the admission: the punter has taken it upon themselves to "clean it up", done some "home restoration work". Oh dear. They've scrubbed and sanded away the very layers of soot and sheen and scratches that would have given this table its unique character – and what's more, they've polished thousands of dollars of value out of existence. The very old table looks brand new! Without its patina there is no gazing at its scars and being transported to an Irish home in the 1700s, imagining a warm meal being served upon it, or a set of silverware displayed, while a peat fire roars away in the corner. It's just a table now.
Sometimes, the opposite thing happens, and someone brings an object in that looks very old indeed – a bronze statue, crusted and patchy, with some Statue-of-Liberty-green bits peeking through. They are hoping it's ancient. A Roman relic, dug out of the dirt and worth a fortune to the right antiquarian. Only the host breaks some bad news: this patina is faked. A trained eye can spot the difference between authentically-acquired patina, and artificially-applied patina – an aesthetic ruse.
Circling back to pateena. Here's my story about our bathtub: It isn't actually plumbed in. This was something we only realised on our very first night in the house. The first sign something was amiss was that there were no actual taps for the bath – just the shower head, on a hose, that we had to pull down to fill the tub up. But still, we were somewhat startled when, upon removing the plug, a tsunami of water roared through the bathroom then slowly subsided to drain through a shower grate in the far corner. A post-flood assessment revealed no connection between the tub and the tiled floor. Baffled at this oversight, we revisited the online real estate listing for the property. This time, we noticed the bathtub appeared twice in the accompanying photographs: once in the bathroom, and once in the overgrowth at the back of the garden. IT WAS A YARD BATH!? No wonder it's so roughed up! How long was it out there? It had rusting old farm implements sitting in it! There were plants growing through the plughole! Quelle horreur. (Another pronunciation note: This officially calls for the French pronunciation of "kel oo-er", but unofficially, it's much funnier if you say "kwell horrah" in a broad Australian accent.) The previous owners had apparently moved the bath inside for their open home staging, and never put it back. It looks weathered because it is weathered! We have since connected the tub to the drain with a large red funnel and hose. It is unsightly, but functional.
I know our bathtub has pateena rather than patina because if I were to have it resurfaced, no one would shed a tear, and I'd be able to advertise it for a lot more on Facebook marketplace than I could if I left it with all the scars that tell of its years in the wild.
And this is how I conceive of the distinction: Pateena is a surface that tells a story only I know; patina tells one others want to hear, too.
¹ In a layer "the thickness of two pennies placed together", according to the US National Parks Service.
² There is a rumour – according to architect and heritage conservationist John Robbins, who led a restoration project on the statue in the 1980s – that the French artisans responsible for the torch component of the sculpture saved up buckets of their urine to help the patination along. Whether they ever did actually douse it in Gallic pee is unclear – but it's a fun story, nonetheless.
