The Early Years
To truly appreciate a Maria Yee piece, one must understand the person behind it. Her personal experiences shape everything from the furniture’s design concept to its creation. Maria’s passion, struggles and triumphs imbue each piece with a vitality and intensity that speak volumes without saying a word.
A Creative Spirit
A child of China’s Cultural Revolution, Maria witnessed first hand the havoc wreaked by the fanatic anti-intellectual radicals. At age 15, she was sent to work in a rock quarry and her parents were imprisoned.
Maria was born in Guangzhou, a city in southern China near Hong Kong. Inquisitive but quiet, she enjoyed riding her bicycle and swimming in the Pearl River. While her childhood dream was to be a physicist, her father, a professor of architecture, sparked her early interest in design.
When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, the anti-intellectual radicals imprisoned her father and later sent him to a tea farm. Because he knew how to build limestone kilns the farmers treated him well. Her mother, a school teacher, was placed under house arrest in the elementary school where she taught. She was later sent to work at a pig farm.
Maria was taken from her family and forced to work in a rock quarry. Only 15 years old, the inquisitive, quiet girl’s creative spirit was cruelly snuffed out. In its place, only the spirit to survive remained.
Encountering Her Destiny