avuhomes SPOTLIGHT on Majvillan Wallpaper’s Charlotta Sandberg
Majvillan
wallpaper's
Charlotta Sandberg creates and designs modern wallpaper. Not just any wallpaper— beautiful, thoughtful, and dreamy designs with characters and creatures a person could spend their day enraptured by. The uniquely Scandinavian designs leap out of her imagination, and from her pens and paintbrushes. Subtly hued unicorns, muted starscapes, and entrancing forest scenes literally enrapture those bold enough to choose Mavjillan designs for their walls.
But how does one grow their own wallpaper company? And following that, how to juggle the twin hats of artist and CEO? “Every day is different,” Charlotta remarks.
She founded the company in 2012, and since then has been wearing the twin hats of artist and businesswoman as she focuses on designs one day, and invoices the next.
Some days find her gathering inspiration, and wandering city streets in search of the right charming cottage or a babbling stream to strike the spark of inspiration needed for her next Mavjillan collection — so far, there have been five.
Other days, she is working with clients and distributors to ensure availability of her products throughout the world. One theme remains consistent, however, — Charlotta is constantly searching for ways to reduce the carbon footprint her wallpaper has on the world.
Sustainability is the heart of the Mavjillan brand. The wallpapers Charlotta’s company creates are not only beautiful but also gentle on the environment. Fabricated in Sweden’s oldest wallpaper company, Charlotta works with colour masters to ensure that combinations are as harmonious as possible. colours are blended by hand to ensure the perfect tones, and the inks used in the final process are water-based, solvent-free, and contain no PVCs. Washable, and non-woven, her creations are thus well-suited for use as wallpapers for boys’ bedrooms and girls’ bedrooms.
The wallpapers Charlotta designs are made to pull the eye in to a rich tapestry of texture, detail, and imagining-- just as the world beyond her own bedroom bewitches Charlotta’s eyes daily. It is her hope that the children whose rooms are adorned by these exquisite wallpapers learn to appreciate the sublimity of the everyday when they grow up, just as she does. Many children lose their artist’s eyes when they become adults, and this wallpaper serves as a charm and preventative force against the dreadful dullness of adulthood.
“I like to be captured by things, to fall in love with a tone, a shape an object,” Charlotta expounds. “I love walking in nature, in a city, in a strange home or a beautiful shop. Beautiful things are to me like treasures, which I love to enclose myself with. My home is very important and the things my husband and I choose to bring in there are our treasures. And just as I search for objects outside my home, I can search for treasures in my imagination. It’s a bit similar. Just that I close my eyes and look inward instead. There is everything I have previously seen and experienced, mixed with my curiosity to create something new. Then it’s a bit like baking a cake. How sweet should it be? What taste, consistency, shape should it have? Then I look for shapes that give the expression the feeling I search for and move piece by piece a world inside me to a sketch outside.”