David Sala is a graphic novelist and illustrator specializing in children’s literature. Among his recent publications with Casterman are The Chess Player and Frankenstein. His distinctive style is defined by a sensitive narrative approach, an innate sense of decorative pattern, and an instinctive use of color as a powerful vehicle for emotion.

His singular visual language is deeply influenced by the decorative movements of the first half of the twentieth century. In his work as a graphic novelist, he conceives and draws interiors with the eye of a true interior designer, expressing a particular affinity for the refined aesthetics of the 1930s.

The decision to collaborate with an illustrator reflects a deliberate artistic vision. It is deeply rooted in the history of Maison Mauny and echoes the creative practices of the 1930s, when interior designers, decorators, and design houses regularly conceived, presented, and showcased their projects through drawing.

Far from serving as a substitute for photography, illustration becomes a language in its own right—a means of capturing the spirit of an interior, conveying its atmosphere, and revealing its emotional depth. Through his distinctive line, David Sala extends this tradition of the drawn project, in which interiors are not merely depicted but interpreted, imagined, and carefully composed.

By entrusting its archives to the artist, Maison Mauny also reconnects with the great nineteenth-century tradition of painted interior portraits. By celebrating the illustrator’s creative gesture as much as the decorative object itself, this collaboration reaffirms the rarity, craftsmanship, and exclusivity of Mauny wallpapers.