Saturday, March 1, 2014

IFDA NY members shows up to remember Maya Romanoff at Interior Design magazine


Maya Romanoff and his team
photograph courtesy Interior Design magazine
A Special Evening 
to Honor and Remember Maya Romanoff!
by Tamara Matthews-Stephenson
check out this beautiful video by Interior Design magazine
recapping the evening where over 100 folks turned up
to honor this design icon!
Joyce & Maya Romanoff~photo courtesy Wikipedia

Last tuesday, I was invited to join the design industry who came out to celebrate the incredible life and work of Maya Romanoff.  It was an evening to remember and acknowledge the great man and body of work of this talent!  Held at Interior Design magazine headquarters, and hosted by the magazine's Editor in Chief, Cindy Allen, many notable design industry professionals attended to join Maya's wife Joyce Romanoff to pay tribute to his life, as well as remember his contributions while noting his introducing handcrafted, functional art to the marketplace.  Maya founded his surfacing material company in 1969 when inspired by the tie dye t-shirts he saw at Woodstock, New York during that era.  He later became known  for his signature wall coverings that graced homes and buildings around the world. 
A little bit of history about Maya:
While a Berkeley student, May sold tie-dyed shirts from the back of a VW van at Woodstock. He became passionate about material dyeing, and learned about the history and process, including  an intensive study of the craft in Japan.  He then returned to his native Chicago, and began to hand-dye leather garments, theatre curtains, and large-scale installation art before focusing on wallcoverings. As his small company grew, his wife, Joyce, joined him in instilling in every team member a deep respect for material balanced with a lawless sense of play. A passion for purity of form and exquisiteness of craft echoes from every level of Maya Romanoff, the company and the design studio. Some of Romanoff's projects include -- New York's Museum of Contemporary Arts' 1972 Fabric Vibrations; Bess' Sunrise, the draping of the Chicago Sun-Times building in 120 ft long ribbons of vibrant color; the desgn of shimmering main stage for The Harris Theatre in Chicago's Millennium Park and more. Some of his more high profile wallcoverings installations includes -- Nobu restaurants all over the world, The Green Room at the Kodak theatre for the Academy Awards, Tiffany & Co, the Playboy Club in LA, Boucheron stores, Phantom of the Opera Theater in LA, projects for Walt Disney, the palace of the Crown Prince of Dubai, Harrods, and more. He has received numerous awards including the ICON of Industry Scholarship Award, a lifetime achievement in 2006 by NEWH, House & Garden's Designers' Best and many more.  
~information above included 
from Maya Romanoff team and Wikipedia~