They can be stained or painted, although left alone they weather to a lovely gray patina.

The bronze was given a dark grey velvety patina so that it looks almost black when the sun hits it.

A whitish gray patina covered every surface, including broom tracks where the floor had last been swept.

But the face above the scattergun was at least sixty years old, lined and furrowed, with a pale, unhealthy sheen to it, overlaid with a gray patina of dust and grease.

Hands have already worn the gray patina off the cigarette of the "Reclining Woman Smoking."

The city seemed overlaid with a dull, gray patina.

Even the horse had a fine gray patina that reflected off the walls of the gully.

But his magnum opus, cast in bronze with a gray patina, is of his flayed skin and scalp hung out to dry.

A serpent-shaped vessel from a century-old Japanese design seems seductive washed in a gray patina.

SOME of the freshest-looking furniture today is actually old: early 20th-century steel pieces that have been stripped of their paint to show a sculptural simplicity and warm, gray patina.