February 22, 2017 | Feature Features
Creative Energy
Interdisciplinary talent is bringing a mod new edge to island interiors.
Multihyphenate wonder Andrew Mau is a hard man to keep up with. The in-demand furniture and product designer, creative director, and consultant travels between gigs on the mainland and his Mānoa-based studio, Mau-House. A Punahou grad, Mau attended the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. He’s exhibited at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City, and he’s currently designing with Rhode Island-based O&G Studio, known for its expertise in Windsor furniture. Back in Hawai‘i, you may know his work from hot resto Mahina & Sun’s in Waikīkī, where he fashioned that iconic shaka print wallpaper. More recently, he’s been crafting a round, 16-foot shaved cowhide rug for the lobby of at Relais & Châteaux’s Hotel Wailea on Maui. Furniture is his passion, true, but, “the interiors market in Hawai‘i is decorative and not as structural-based,” Mau says. “There’s a lot of emphasis on textiles and surfaces.” His designs are carried at retailers in the islands, across the country and on his website. There, you can shop for beautiful treasures like the Paniolo mirror (from $1,950); the Midnight linen shirt ($195); or a sculptural, shark-tooth-inspired mano lei necklace ($750). “The retail success around the country has been via creating a varied line of objects that represents me in Hawai‘i, but also me not in Hawai‘i,” says Mau. “I enjoy the national outlook, and I love the island-specific too. It makes the Hawai‘i stuff—like a ‘opihi bottle opener I cast from a real shell—that much more special.”
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