Material Witness

Staff -- Interior Design, 10/31/2008 12:00:00 AM

Spy, Constellation, Temp by Veritas Collection.

Marybeth Shaw

Bamboo, Daisy, Kiku by Veritas Collection.

Links by Veritas Collection.

Beads, Kiku, Laces by Veritas Collection.

Successful designers always seem to have mentors. But that only begins to explain Marybeth Shaw's two-decade journey into the design stratosphere. The designer of the Veritas Collection started as an assistant creative director with Formica Corporation, working alongside a parade of visiting design luminaries. Shaw then served for six years as chief creative director for New York–based wall coverings manufacturer Wolf-Gordon. While there, she wasted little time re-branding the company and producing three collections of experimental prints, by Interior Design Hall of Famer Laurinda Spear, celebrity industrial designer Karim Rashid, and Rem Koolhaas's pal, the multidisciplinary designer Petra Blaisse.

Drawing on her own formative experience in France as a master's student at the Ecole d'Architecture de Paris-Belleville, Shaw began to craft her own work in 2004. Her firm, Shaw Jelveh Design, is based out of both a new Manhattan studio and an old Baltimore row house crisply renovated with co-principal and architect Majid Jelveh.

Showing her range of design capabilities with patterns like Collage and Links, Shaw embraces bold geometry. With Spy, Constellation, and Temp, she filters light to let the negative spaces glow. Bamboo, Daisy, and Kiku are botanically inspired, and Laces, Magnetic, Beads, and Arctic are playful layers of film. Textures for the panels are highly tactile, and sometimes inspired by architectural glass. The surfaces of custom panels may be combined with color and graphic patterning. With Collage, layouts vary to ensure that no two panels will be precisely alike. The same is true for her Links series, which encapsulates overlapping squares or circles of wood veneer, paper, foil, and translucent colored film. Consider them a tool for your own creative journey. 212-924-5558; robin-reigi.com. circle 742

2008 FALL MARKET TABLOID – BUILDING PRODUCTS

Don't miss our other 2008 Fall Market Tabloid building products features:

• Corporate Canvas
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• Building Products
  See the newest in building product design, chosen by the editors of Interior Design.+ SlideshowSee the full 2008 Fall Market Tabloid.