The Telegraph profiles the Pangolin Foundry where Contemporary artists like Marc Quinn cast their works:
More than 200 artists every year see their dreams made substance there, nurtured by a team of midwives every bit as diligent as those working in the hospital down the road.
“We are the guts rather than the glamour end of the art world,” says Claude Koenig who, with her husband, Rungwe Kingdon, owns the Pangolin foundry in Stroud.
Started 25 years ago with a £1,000 loan, the foundry, now the biggest in Britain, employs 186 people and is the central turbine of a new industry in the town – art.
Once famous for manufacturing scarlet jackets for soldiers in the Civil War and, more recently, tennis balls, Stroud now harbours around 180 artists’ studios, including two of Damien Hirst’s “factories”.
Not for the Kingdon Koenigs, however, the houses in Long Island or the boats and smart London pads that their artists enjoy. They live in a barn in the slightly dull village of Stonehouse.
“But we have fun,” they say. “We get invited to all the big parties.”
Damien Hirst’s Dream Factory of British Art (Telegraph)
