If walls could SING, they would sing about Maya Romanoff and his groundbreaking innovations in wallcoverings. The term wallcoverings seems far too commonplace to describe the mystique of Maya Romanoff’s creations. His website opts for the term “extraordinary surfacing materials” but even that term fails to encapsulate his genius. Wall experiences, maybe.
Not that he confines himself to walls, any surface can become a canvas for Maya’s creative masterpieces, including mirror frames, support columns and ceilings like this “True Metals” ceiling below.
From his beginnings making tie-dyed shirts after a visit to Woodstock until his death in 2014, Maya was always making a bold statement. He changed his name from Richard to “Multifarious Maya” during a visit to India in 1969 and he realized that every surface was a potential canvas for his art. For decades he has used his unique artistic vision, innovative designs, and drive to always evolve and create new processes to produce high-end, hand-made, designs that simultaneously integrate with paper and push out from the walls.
Maya Romanoff surfaces are certainly not content to sit quietly in the background. They jump up and demand your eye, often literally popping off the background. Never one for the expected, Maya uses such diverse materials as fabrics, wood, gold leaf, bamboo, glass beads, and shells, all laid by hand in groundbreaking production processes.
His designs are never boring, but they do run the spectrum from knock-your-socks-off-WOW to elegant and sedate, from dark and somber to cheerful or barely-there.
Maya Romanoff Corp. is a very warm, people-oriented company based in Skokie, IL where he and his partner and wife, Joyce Romanoff, pursued his artistic vision. Sadly, Maya passed away earlier this year. His wife is now heading up the company.
Thank you, Maya, for sharing your artistic genius with us. For more of Maya’s work, see our pinterest board. You can also see a short video of the Maya hand-coloring process on our Facebook page. Don’t forget to “Like” us!