A huge part of the concept behind Drosten was collaborating with local creatives to build a space with the DNA of Glasgow etched into its surroundings. When you think of steel fabrication, “creative” might not be the first word that comes to mind - but MJ and Eleonora of The Ritual Works are among the most creative people we’ve met. They’ve played a vital role in shaping Drosten into the space it is today, and through that work we’ve formed a natural friendship and an ongoing collaboration that we’re incredibly grateful for.
The Ritual Works:
We founded The Ritual Works in 2018 driven by disenchantment with the industry we couldn’t shake. With both of us having had experiences within various manufacturing processes, it was apparent that the “technical” and the “beautiful” were being treated as separate conversations. We wanted a practice that could bridge those two languages and one that took the aesthetic seriously and delivered the engineering and reliability required on real projects. We called it The Ritual Works because that’s genuinely how it feels - the same motions repeated until they become second nature, until your hands know what “right” looks like before your brain catches up.
What we do now spans a lot: architectural features and façades, commercial fit-outs, commissioned pieces, food-grade assemblies, and broader production runs. Some days it’s all about repetition and consistency; other days it’s prototyping, resolving a detail, making a complex idea buildable. Either way, the goal stays the same: make something that lasts structurally, visually, and in the way it performs over time.
Before even considering metal fabrication as a path, we knew we wanted to combine making and creativity, and that we wanted to build something as a shared experience. In business it’s important to have someone to rely on, especially as you scale, so being in it together from day one was the real starting point. What it would become came secondary, and there’s freedom in that: even now, we don’t cement ourselves to one purpose or one industry. Although we’ve forged our space in metalwork, we still like to think of ourselves as “outsiders,” capable of pulling other interests and skills into the fold. That mindset lets us build meaningful, productive relationships with the people we meet along the way, because we’re naturally curious and genuinely driven to bring visions to life. That’s why the collaboration with Drosten was such a joyful experience - we felt an instant connection to the aesthetic, an immediate kinship with the guys and a real drive to materialise their vision: creating something distinctive in Glasgow, the city we love, which deserves standout projects like this to thrive.
The pull towards manufacturing was a combination of love for the heritage, especially being rooted in Scotland, the desire to make a seismic change in the industry and the challenge of using a raw and indifferent medium and turning it into something functional, expressive and permanent. MJ comes from a line of steelworkers starting with his great-grandfather who served his time at the steel foundry, so the material has always felt familiar not just as a trade, but as a culture. Before metalwork became the focus, however, he studied fashion patternmaking. Learning how to draft, cut, and assemble flat materials into three-dimensional form sharpened his eye for proportion, line and negative space. Eleonora came to manufacturing from an anthropological background which, in practice, means she’s always been tuned to how people live, move, and feel in the spaces around them. That perspective translates naturally into the work: fabrication isn’t just about making an object, it’s about understanding context, who it’s for, what it’s like to use, how a detail changes the experience of a room.
It was a pleasure to play a part in Drosten's story and to show that metal can take unexpected forms. Though our work often involves commercial projects requiring repetitive automation, our heart really lies in collaborations that challenge our creativity and require development of new processes.
Photography by Alex James-Aylin