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Designing, fabricating, sculpting without limits

Small fabricator thinks big, achieves big results

Taylor Wallace and wife Emily work from Metal Magic Interiors’ office, which is outfitted with a combination of reclaimed and newly constructed furniture.

It’s not an overstatement to say that Chicago has it all. Its five-star restaurants, legendary live music scene, and great number of well-known museums and other attractions draw tourists from all over the world. It has world-class universities, a thriving business district, too many manufacturing firms to count, and dozens of international businesses have headquarters downtown. Its professional sports teams have won more than a few championships, and like most big cities, it has a unique culture and a long and storied history, rich in facts garnished with a bit of fiction.

Of course, its history has a dark side, notably described in great detail in The Jungle. Written in 1906, long before worker and consumer protections took hold, Upton Sinclair’s novel told dire tales of the grim working conditions of the working-class immigrant population, notably in the meatpacking industry. The book was centered on the Stockyards District, a concentration of rail lines, livestock pens, and slaughterhouses that made the city one of the largest meatpacking centers in the world. At its peak, it encompassed 375 acres and supplied more than 80 percent of the nation’s meat supply. Many of the industry’s 25,000 workers lived in crowded, run-down neighborhoods near the yards. As Sinclair described it, low wages, predatory lending practices, and a preponderance of con men made daily life daunting at best for the poverty-ridden denizens of this community.

Changes in the industry led to the demise of the Stockyards, which closed in 1971. A small portion of the former Stockyard location is an industrial park and some food processing takes place there, but it has shaken off the dark and foreboding image it had decades ago. These days, the area is mainly a mix of residential and light commercial businesses, and the surrounding neighborhoods are gentrified, respectable, and thriving.

“Bridgeport has a design vibe,” said Taylor Wallace, a resident, artist, metal sculptor, and owner of Metal Magic Interiors Inc., as he described a neighborhood right in the middle of the former meatpacking district. The Bridgeport Arts Center is at the western edge of the neighborhood, the Zhou B Art Center is in the middle of things, and Art Metal Design Studio is nearby. A retail shop in the area, Hardscrabble Gifts, carries locally made products, many with Chicago themes.

“This area has quite a few other creative businesses,” Wallace said. “To promote the arts, the studios and art-related businesses open their doors to the public for no-charge exhibitions, displays, and tours during the evening hours on the third Friday of every month.”

The sense of history in Bridgeport is palpable. The word “stockyard” is used liberally to name various points of interest in the area, and some of Wallace’s work reflects a similar theme: the refurbishment, renewal, and reuse of old and often cast-off items.

The desk in his office came straight from a Sears Roebuck catalog, probably in the 1940s era, and once belonged to his grandfather. Repeated sawings to shorten the original legs eventually made them useless to Wallace, so he replaced them with lengths of square steel tubing, coated black to contrast with the rich, vibrant colors of the original wooden desktop (see Lead Image).

“We utilize a lot of old material,” he said.

A Hot Start in the Windy City

A Knoxville native and a graduate of the University of Tennessee, Wallace continued his education by completing a master’s degree in fine art (MFA) from Washington University in St. Louis. His education initially focused on ceramics, then casting metals. Along the way he learned a bit about fabricating and in 2003 got a taste of metal sculpting on a large scale during a stint in Minnesota. In this particular setting, each artist had his own unobstructed, outdoor workspace; access to tools, machines and materials; and the use of a gantry crane. Allowed to design and build anything he wanted, Wallace was hooked quickly on the possibilities that come with thinking about art on a much larger scale than he was accustomed to in firing ceramics and making castings.

After moving to Chicago in 2010, Wallace entered an art exhibition hosted by the National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis, Tenn. After mulling over a choice between making a barbecue grill and a smoker, he opted to design and build a smoker. He came up with a unique take on smoker design, modeling it after Sarah Palin’s head. He didn’t have a workspace at that time but managed to borrow a temporary patch on the premises of a Chicago steel supplier, D. Wexler & Sons, and got down to business. He finished the piece on time, shipped it to Memphis, and found that his wry humor didn’t go over well in the decidedly conservative state. However, if the art community were a state, it would be mainly blue, so he garnered more than a small bit of interest in his unusual creation from many of the other artists and quite a few of the visitors.

Figure 1
Metal Magic Interiors’ fabrication specialist, Nick Hagen, prepares several stainless steel chair legs that are reminiscent of the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) in Chicago. Unsatisfied with a commercially available polishing kit that left intermediate scratches behind, Hagen sought and tried quite a few products before finding a combination of polishing wheel and abrasive that removed them.

“I was handing out business cards to receptive people and got into a discussion with a Chicago-based fabricator,” he said. He was interested in selling his powder coating and metal fabricating business, which consisted of a reputation, location, machines, materials, and two employees. The company, UV Metal Arts & Powder Coating, had an established niche in the area and stable revenue.

“I had to figure out the flow, but I was already a fabricator, so I took this opportunity,” Wallace said. Wallace soon realized that he’d have to figure out a few more things. The largest customer soon took its business elsewhere, and the employees moved on, so he essentially had to start fresh with a new name and a somewhat different direction. Gone was the emphasis on powder coating, replaced by a focus on designing high-end products, fabricating custom items, and refurbishing commercial spaces—or, as Wallace calls such projects, “architectural interventions.” In keeping with his company’s new name, Metal Magic Interiors, Wallace focused on projects for interior spaces, whether home, business, or institution. He also learned quoting, mainly by trial and error.

“One of my early projects involved a number of bunk beds,” he said. “The concept wasn’t difficult. Making a bunk bed is a matter of two decks, two ends, and a ladder, and I came up with a modular concept. However, I was new to this, so it was a challenge to figure out the flow, estimate the time needed to make each item and do the welding, put a figure on the powder coating, and so on. Also, the beds weren’t all the same size, so I had to work with a variety of dimensions.”

Over time, he learned a few more invaluable lessons. Something as simple as a chair brings a custom fabricator’s challenges into sharp focus.

“Chairs are really labor-intensive,” he said. “A chair made in the U.S. that sells for $250 can’t compete with a similar chair made in China that sells for $125,” he said. “Depending on the design, a table requires as much labor as a chair, but you need just one table. It’s hard to sell a table and four chairs when the chairs alone cost $1,000.”

This doesn’t mean that Metal Magic Interiors doesn’t make and sell chairs. It means that Wallace has to find the right client.

“The biggest challenge is educating potential clients about quality,” he said. “When you buy from us, you’re buying a high-quality, hand-made item.” Although some initially balk at the price of a hand-made item, Wallace finds it helpful if the client has ever dealt with the disappointment of making a bad purchasing decision by putting too much emphasis on price.

“When we buy inexpensive items, we learn the relationship between price and value,” he said.

Wallace also emphasizes the local origin of his products and projects, noting that “the work is always done by someone in your neighborhood.” When he says that, he’s not referring only to himself but also to the crews he hires to do the work on-site when he has a large architectural job.

“We do a lot of creative fixture installations, and I rely on the local trade union members,” he said. “They’re the best welders and pipefitters.”

Figure 2
The tables at Antique Taco, 1000 W. 35th St., Chicago, were designed and built by Metal Magic Interiors. Heavy reliance on square and rectangular tubing is a hallmark of the company.

This doesn’t mean that Wallace himself doesn’t weld. Indeed, he does. Although he learned quite a bit about welding long before coming to Chicago, he credits his short time working for Vector Custom Installation (a few miles north of the former Stockyards), specifically Barry Hennemann, with bringing his welding skill up a notch or two.

“I didn’t work there long, but I learned a lot in a short time,” he said.

While the company does quite a bit of work in furniture, it doesn’t have a specific focus. Custom signs, frames for artwork, sconces, furniture, and shelving are some of the main lines of work, but Wallace doesn’t shy away from a small sculpture or overhauling a restaurant’s dining room.

Making the Most of Many Metals

Fabricating is one thing; finishing is something else altogether. Working with established principles and some experimentation, Wallace has developed and refined a few finishing processes and now has a few tricks up his sleeve. In addition to fabrication, he keeps in mind all of the possibilities of final appearance when the project is completed.

“I did some work in traditionally blackened carbon steel, which usually looks great, but for some of our outdoor projects, we had some rusting,” he said. “Now we have a different process, galvanizing before applying an off-the-shelf blackening agent, and this works really well.”

The company also does a lot of work in stainless steel and red metals.

“These come with different headaches, but rusting isn’t one of them,” he said. Acids develop patinas on red metals and, of course, focused efforts can make stainless steel shine like a mirror. Even in this endeavor, a little ingenuity goes a long way. Dissatisfied with one of the commercially available products for polishing stainless steel, Wallace and the Metal Magic Interiors staff experimented tirelessly until they found a better way to make a flawless finish (see Figure 1).

While everything Wallace does involves metals, Bridgeport has a lot to offer in terms of other media. The workspace he leases is just a small part of an old industrial building; another tenant, a like-minded artisan, is focused on woodworking. This provides not only a partnership but a cross-pollination of ideas.

“I do a lot of work with other companies, for example making the steel undercarriage for wood-topped tables or making sturdy components to reinforce fiberglass furniture,” he said. “It’s gotten to the point that many trust my judgement in design, and I have enough metals knowledge to come through,” he said. He works with sheet and plate, but this isn’t to discount tube. He has come to rely on it for its many benefits—its symmetrical shape, its favorable strength-to-weight ratio, its aesthetic appeal, and its overall functionality. Whether he’s makwing a shelving system, a table, a set of chairs, or anything else that needs structural support, tube is Wallace’s material of choice (see Figure 2). His inventory isn’t large, but he always has a variety of shapes, sizes, and wall thicknesses available, and his shop is equipped with as much equipment for fabricating tube as it is set for fabricating sheet and plate.

Another benefit to Bridgeport is its proximity to material sources—Wexler is less than two miles away—and while many outside Chicago might find this hard to believe, logistically the location isn’t bad. As long as he doesn’t venture out at the height of rush hour, Wallace has easy access to the west and north sides of the city.

Figure 3
A small staff and a small workspace don’t limit Taylor Wallace, founder of Metal Magic Interiors Inc. This large smoker is just one of many examples of large projects he designed and built. Photo by Oopey Mason.

Predicting the Unpredictable

The business ebbs and flows, as does Wallace’s staff. He has a few employees on the payroll permanently, but the dynamic nature of this business means that he can’t keep many employed year-round.

“I hire on quite a few people when we’re busy, but when a big project ends, they have to do the Chicago hustle,” he said, referring to the downside of temporary work. He empathizes, though, in that he has to hustle more or less all of the time to find new work. Commissions for sculptures follow no known pattern or cycle. In any community anywhere in the country, library districts, hospitals, banks, and businesses occasionally find funding for a piece of artwork, but these initiatives follows no schedule. It would be a fool’s errand to try to predict or plan when such a customer might come calling. The upside is that quite a bit of work in custom fabrication is predictable.

“We’re usually busy in the winter, which probably has to do with springtime plans,” he said. In the restaurant, hospitality, and entertainment sectors, especially in the local area, this makes a lot of sense. Chicago is an entertainment and hospitality hub, and scheduling an expansion or unveiling a fresh, updated look just before tourist season is a sound plan. As far as actually finding that work, that’s also part of the Chicago hustle. As an established and reliable fabricator, however, Wallace doesn’t have to hustle quite a much as he used to. His reputation does some of that for him.

“I get a lot of referrals by word of mouth, and I have learned by trial about boosting search engine results,” he said.

He also benefits from having a small company, one without any bureaucracy.

“I try to respond to every inquiry quickly,” he said, well aware of the critical first impression. “This is a small operation, and I’m accessible, so a fast response is important,” he said. He has found that after an initial meeting with a savvy client, he deals with the criteria that any other fabricator deals with, in the same order: Service, quality, and price.

One example of a typical sale for Wallace is a ring-style fire pit, which illustrates the relationship between quality and price. Metal Magic Interiors makes three sizes and can’t compete with similar store-bought rings, which can sell for as little as $100. A corresponding item—not a like item, but a corresponding item—from Metal Magic Interiors costs almost four times as much. The difference? As Wallace sees it, if you buy the inexpensive version, one day your children will look back fondly on that fire pit, remembering it before it rusted out, fell apart, and went out in the trash. If you buy a high-quality, handmade fire ring, your children’s children won’t remember it so much as use it because it will last for generations.

Selling a fire ring is one thing; selling a potential client on a bid to rehab an entire restaurant or overhaul a large hotel lobby is something else altogether. Even after he sells the client on a particular design, Wallace has learned that it takes a combination of discussing past accomplishments and gentle persuasion about his organizational capability to win a client over. Procuring material, fabricating everything in a timely fashion, arranging transportation, and hiring an installation crew has nothing to do with an MFA, but it is part of the Chicago hustle and a skill set Wallace has been honing since 2010.

The next time you’re in Chicago, eating dinner at a restaurant, staying in a hotel, walking around the business district, or enjoying a fire in a friend’s back yard, look closely. You might find yourself seated at a table, sitting in a chair, looking at a sculpture, or warming yourself near an heirloom fire ring, and any of these might have come from Metal Magic Interiors.

Photos by Eric Lundin except where noted.

Metal Magic Interiors Inc., 1048 W. 37th St

About the Author
FMA Communications Inc.

Eric Lundin

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Elgin, IL 60123

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Eric Lundin worked on The Tube & Pipe Journal from 2000 to 2022.