Furniture Designer Maria Yee
A glance at Maria Yee’s line of furniture tells you that she has elevated furniture design to an art form. The clean lines of her pieces will add elegance and grace to any room. But one thing you might not notice at first while enjoying the artistry of these pieces is the incredible technical, eco-friendly innovations that go into creating each one.
Maria Yee has perfected a patented BreathingJoinery™ manufacturing system, based on traditional techniques, that uses no nails or screws in construction and allows the materials to maintain their original strength and beauty.
This platform bed is an excellent example of this incredible joinery technique and easily has the highest construction quality of any bed we’ve seen recently.
Yee also pioneered the development of FSC-certified BambooTimbre™, a material created by layering renewable, fast-growing Moso bamboo to create boards that are stronger than steel.
Other ways Maria Yee works to minimize the environmental footprint of her line are by heating the factory with scraps created in the furniture production process and by using specially formulated water-based finishes and glues.
Our Mill & Leaf team enjoyed getting to visit Maria Yee’s incredible showrooms at this spring’s High Point Furniture Market. Typical of her eco-friendly aesthetic, her showroom was housed in a renovated space in Hight Point, North Carolina. We loved the repurposed floors!
The clean lines of the furniture are beautiful in person, but she has managed to make these pieces incredibly comfortable to sit in as well.
Upholstered furniture was a new direction for this artist in 2012. This Arial sofa was one of our favorites.
Since Yee pays careful attention to the design of all sides of her pieces, the back of each product is gorgeous, so they would be a perfect fit for open floor plans where all sides of the pieces need to shine.
Finally, as if the excellent design and environmental conscience of Maria Yee’s furniture weren’t enough reason to fall in love with this line, the story of what led this artist to furniture is truly unique.
Born in China, she was sent to work at a rock quarry after her parents were imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. After her release she studied as a machinist and became a mechanical engineer. Her passion for the art and design of furniture was sparked as she saw the destruction of historic masterpieces during the Cultural Revolution. As a result, she recruited a group of masters to recreate museum-quality pieces from the Ming dynasty, which led to the creation of her California-based company in 1988.
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