I spent several days in Wellington last week and, unusually for me, barely thought about work.

One of the highlights was the World of WearableArt show. What struck me most was not simply the extraordinary workmanship, but the imagination behind it. Familiar materials had been cut, shaped, combined and reinterpreted until they became something completely unexpected.

It made me think about Metalier.

At its heart, what we do is quite simple: we take real metal and make it possible to use that metal in places where solid sheet or fabricated metal may be difficult, impractical or simply impossible.

But the interesting part begins when a designer, artist or applicator asks:

What else could we do with it?

That is where creative metal finishes become much more than a surface treatment.

Metal can become decorative pattern. It can follow curves. It can be textured, polished, aged or patinated. It can transform furniture, cabinetry, walls, sculpture, architectural features and objects that might otherwise never be made from metal at all.

The image accompanying this article is a good example.

The underlying surface is simple. The geometric pattern changes everything.

It draws on a long tradition of Islamic geometric design, but the material gives it another dimension. The metal catches the light while the darker surface recedes. Pattern, texture and material work together.

It is neither conventional metalwork nor conventional decoration.

And that is precisely what interests us.

Creativity travels

Perhaps because I had just spent an evening surrounded by international creativity at WOW, I have also been thinking about where ideas come from.

Metalier was developed in New Zealand, but some of the most interesting interpretations of the material have come from people thousands of kilometres away.

We now have an established presence in India and are seeing encouraging new interest from Indonesia and Japan.

Asia has not always been an easy market for us to reach, so I find the current enquiries particularly interesting.

Not because I expect designers in Jakarta, Mumbai or Tokyo to use Metalier in the same way.

Quite the opposite.

The exciting part is seeing what happens when the same material is placed in the hands of people with different design traditions, different architecture and different ways of seeing.

Creativity may be universal, but its expression is wonderfully local.

The same material can move from the strong geometry of Islamic-inspired pattern to something much quieter and more organic. That change in visual language is part of what makes decorative metal so interesting: the material remains real metal, but the character of the finished work can be completely different.

A return to Japan

Japan has a particular resonance for me.

Many years ago I travelled there with my daughter, who was then four years old and very blonde.

She attracted considerable attention. Cars would pass us and people would wave at her.

We were probably fairly noticeable ourselves: travelling through Japan in a right-hand-drive Citroën driven by a real Frenchman wearing a beret.

It was one of those trips that remains vivid decades later.

So there is something rather pleasing about Japan suddenly appearing in my working life again through new enquiries about Metalier.

Different decade. Different reason.

Same curiosity about what might happen next.

The material is the beginning

We talk a great deal about the technical qualities of Metalier’s decorative metal coatings, and rightly so. It is a material honed to excellence by many years of testing and testing again and again.

Specifications are the first part of the story.

The second part is what that material makes possible.

Our job is to provide a superior real metal system – one that gives designers, artists and applicators the confidence and freedom to explore ideas that may not be achievable with conventional metalwork.

The material is not simply the starting point. It is what enables the idea.

Metalier exists to excite creativity: to put real metal into the hands of people who will look at it and ask:

What happens if we use it differently?

That question is usually where the best work begins.