What distinguishes Maggie’s design philosophy is its deeply personal foundation. Growing up in Shanghai’s French Concession surrounded by architecture blending Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Neoclassical and Eastern styles shaped her aesthetic sensibility. Her grandmother, who rebuilt furniture during the Cultural Revolution with almost nothing, passed down an understanding that beauty resides in the stories objects carry. This inheritance manifests throughout her work, most directly in Mother of Pearl, reimagining her grandmother’s desk with its collaged surface under glass. Approaching her practice as a “world-building experience” inspired by the Wiener Werkstätte movement’s concept of gesamtkunstwerk, Maggie creates an evolving narrative where each piece contributes to something larger than itself. This holistic vision liberates her from perfectionism, focusing instead on creating a cohesive story through her growing body of work.

While storytelling in furniture design is often aspired to, few achieve it with the elegant immersion that characterizes Maggie’s creations. She stands apart from contemporary design conventions that present objects in sterile isolation. Her upcoming collection at GSL Gallery in Paris and new works for the Living Room Design Fair promise to expand this distinctive vision. In a sense, spending time around Maggie and her works is akin to a stroll through an art gallery or a library where stories are imbued into the very fabric of each piece. Through secret compartments, textural contrasts, and unexpected juxtapositions, she transforms furniture into portals that have connected us to memory, identity, and the gentle magic of the objects around us.

Your work often deals with preservation, from your restoration experience to your current practice. How has this background influenced your material choices and approach to creating new pieces?

I worked for a year as a furniture conservator during covid, conserving over a hundred pieces of antique furniture, from 17th or 18th century Baroque and rococo furniture to Midcentury modern furniture. The meticulous decisions made by their creators, the intricate details hidden have really touched me have become part of my own creative vocabulary.

As Owen Jones so aptly wrote in The Grammar of Ornament: “We possess the inestimable advantage of living in an age when nothing of the past remains a secret; each stone of any monument of every clime has told its tale, which is now brought within reach of our fire-sides; yet, hitherto, how little have we shown ourselves worthy of this great privilege!”

This privilege, to me, is an invitation—not to mimic but to reimagine, not to repeat but to transform. I often find myself asking, “Why don’t we make things like this anymore?” I seek to answer that question through my making, not by looking back nostalgically, but by carrying history forward into the present.

You’ve described objects as “diaries without words.” Could you talk about how this idea of objects as storytellers manifests in pieces like your Labyrinth Garden?

The idea that “objects are diaries without words” speaks to the way material things can carry and communicate the essence of human experiences, emotions, and memories. Unlike written words, objects express their narratives through form, texture, craftsmanship, and use. They silently encapsulate the time, place, and emotions of their creation, becoming vessels of the meaning.

For example I think Labyrinth Garden would be a good representation of this idea. It is a fully tiled cabinet that is composed of 105 hand-drawn tiles, taking over two months of work. Each mark and symbol on the tile is like an entry in a journal, capturing emotions or thoughts that might be too complex or have been buried too deep down in the subconscious for them to be articulated in words. Collectively, these fragments form a larger narrative that captured the entire experience of that period of time in my life.

Objects also invite more interpretations than a piece of text. They could be interpreted purely on its function, questions evoked through the decision making of the form, material, texture. This quality gives objects their unique power to resonate deeply and evoke feelings that words sometimes cannot. In this way, they become diaries, carrying stories that remain alive as long as they are seen, touched, or experienced.

Your grandmother’s desk with its collaged surface under glass seems to be a recurring inspiration. How does this personal history inform your current design practice?

I have a really close relationship with my grandmother. She has always been an inspiring figure in my life, and her approach to living—especially her relationship with the objects she surrounded herself with—has profoundly shaped my perspective on design and creation.

She grew up in post-colonial Shanghai, surrounded by architecture and furniture shaped by the French Concession’s blend of the European Art Deco/ Neoclassical and Chinese styles. Her family lost everything in her teenage years during the Cultural Revolution, but she never gave up her pursuit for beautiful things. She taught herself to sew her own clothes, and together with my grandfather rebuilt the furniture with what little they had.

The desk Mother of Pearl is a tribute to her. It is a reimagination of the desk she once owned and transformed. Her resilience and her way of turning the simplest things into something meaningful have deeply shaped how I approach design. Beauty isn’t just about what we see—it’s about the stories objects carry and the emotions they evoke.

Much of your work deals with hidden elements and reveals from secret compartments to transforming pieces. What draws you to this interplay between concealment and discovery?

It’s like the cherry on top for a piece.

A little bit of magic and ritual that sparks joy :)

You’ve mentioned that your studio practice serves as a “world building experience.” Could you elaborate on how you see your pieces working together to create larger narratives?

To break down the concept of “world-building experience”:

The inspiration for viewing my creative process as a “world-building practice” stems from the Wiener Werkstätte movement. This movement emphasized the creation of gesamtkunstwerk, or a “total work of art,” where artists sought to establish a unified aesthetic throughout an entire designed environment. The term “aesthetic” might have become so overused today that it risks losing meaning. To me, aesthetics are more than surface beauty; they are a visual bias and could be used as a psychological tool allowing us to delve into the deeper “whys” behind our attraction to certain visual language. For me, gesamtkunstwerk represents the act of infusing art and creative energy into every fine detail of life, turning one’s inner universe into something tangible and interconnected.

A “world-building experience” is also a lifelong pursuit of mine. You can think of it as writing a play or a movie script, with more and more characters being introduced, gradually weaving a richer, more complete story.  This idea is what drives me to keep creating. Every creation, or each time of the “externalization”,  becomes a reflection of a moment in time, like an entry in a diary, capturing the thoughts, emotions, and experiences of that period. It can reflect personal emotions or even aspects of the collective unconscious that are difficult to express in words at the time.

Additionally, this “world-building experience” practice also serves as a mindset that frees me from the burden of perfectionism. I no longer obsess over whether a single piece is “perfect” or fully encapsulates my practice. For me, the idea of a “perfect” work doesn’t exist. What truly matters is the cohesive narrative created by the collective whole, forming a world that is both immersive and endlessly evolving.