Industry and fine art have collided on a global scale at a provincial Taranaki stainless steel fabrication company.
Watch the Global Stainless case study video on engineering the world's best seemingly seamless spherical mirror art.
Operating from a workshop in the small town of Normanby, Global Stainless has built an international reputation for creating the finest stainless steel artworks designed by renowned artists, and for fabricating high-quality stainless domes and other components for the food, dairying, transport and pharmaceutical industries.
“It’s quite amazing really,” reflects founder and managing director Lincoln Raikes, who started Global Stainless in 2004 and now has four sons working alongside him.
“I always thought it would have been more of an industrial business, but we’ve really just fallen into the art work to a degree. We’ve gone from making milk vats to fine art,” he laughs.
While the industrial side of the business, Global Stainless Industrial, remains its backbone, Global Stainless Artworks, the company’s art manufacturing arm, now accounts for half its business.
Global Stainless Artworks fabricates high-quality stainless steel balls, spheres and sculptures, and produces replicas and one-off pieces for international galleries and individuals. While the artworks are designed by professional artists and sculptors, it’s the
skill of Lincoln and his team that bring them to life.
A fitter and turner by trade, it all started in the 1990s with Lincoln experimenting at making spheres. He patented a specialist double curve manufacturing process and then worked for five years on creating stainless steel balls that looked seamless and had a mirror-like finish.
The company’s big break came in 2009 when renowned British Indian conceptual and installation artist Anish Kapoor discovered the company’s mirror polished spheres online.
“Kapoor requested a sample, which we shipped to him, and next thing we get an order for 74 spheres,” Lincoln says.
Kapoor’s celebrated work, the 15m Tall Tree and the Eye, consists of 74 mirror balls, all fabricated and polished by Global Stainless. It was displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and is now installed permanently at the Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain.
From there the requests flowed, including replicas of Tall Tree and the Eye for clients in Singapore and South Korea, Bill Gates’ business partner, and American business magnate Larry Ellison. The company’s creations have adorned the likes of Monte Carlo casino, and it has had ongoing work from other artists and Kapoor, in particular producing a number of stainless
steel mirror dishes.
Two 2.5m tall ‘sound mirrors’, gifted by Global Stainless, are installed at King Edward Park in Hāwera.
Lincoln says the key to their success has been “millions of hours of patience and a strong belief”.
“It’s the quality welding technique and the polishing technique that the team have perfected over many years. We produce a mirror on stainless steel that is clearer than your bathroom mirror,” he says.
Working internationally from South Taranaki has not been a hindrance.
“There’s good tradespeople around and they are loyal. The area is humming – there’s lots of manufacturing, such as food manufacturing, and an abundance of opportunities.”
And it’s onwards and upwards for Global Stainless. “We’ve had some interesting inquiries from space companies, so we would like to get into fabricating spherical pressure tanks for the space industry.”