American Design 
12 September 2019
American Design 
323

Alexander Girard

Important collection of fabric samples

Herman Miller
USA, c. 1970
various textiles 30½ h × 27 w in (77 × 69 cm)
estimate: $15,000–20,000
result: $18,750
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Paper manufacturer's label to most examples ‘Herman Miller Textiles Zeeland Mich designed by Alexander Girard’.
provenance: Acquired directly from Herman Miller | Collection of Betty Gorecki, Lombard, IL

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A Life Lived with Herman Miller

The Collection of Betty Gorecki

Betty Gorecki's husband Richard worked for Herman Miller from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s—a defining era in the company's history, when the designs of Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson and Alexander Girard changed the look of modern American design. 

Richard Gorecki was a traveling salesman that worked for the interiors department, consulting offices on furnishing their spaces with the adaptable and optimistic furniture and textiles that would become iconic of the era. Betty, a hairstylist who owned a salon, fell in love with the modern designs of Herman Miller and outfitted their home with the colorful and inviting aesthetic (even making custom curtains and pillows out of Girard fabrics). 

Art is only art if it is synonymous with living.

Alexander Girard

Along with classic Herman Miller designs, Betty also decorated her home with items purchased from Girard's Textile & Objects shop, including the delightful handmade dolls of Marilyn Neuhart and folk art from South America. This collection also features Herman Miller Summer Picnic posters by Stephen Frykholm, timeless Nelson and Eames furniture, and Girard works ranging from an important collection of over six hundred fabric samples to his good-humored Environmental Enrichment panels.

Though Betty and Richard divorced in the early 1970s, Betty continued to live with these designs, seamlessly integrating their ease, optimism and resilience into her home and life for over forty years—just as Eames, Nelson and Girard had hoped they would be.

What makes a design unique, original, inventive, imaginative, and compelling? What are those attributes that really make your design really stand out amongst the crowd? I think the dimensionality comes from the person designing it, if that makes any sense. The design has to have presence.

Stephen Frykholm

A Comprehensive Collection
of Designs by Alexander Girard

Featuring more than 600 fabric samples

This collection contains over six hundred fabric samples that Alexander Girard designed for Herman Miller from the 1950s to the 1970s, providing an in-depth look into what made Girard one of the most defining colorists and textile designers of the twentieth century. 

Charles Eames hired Girard as the head of new fabric department at Herman Miller in 1952. Over the course of the next twenty years, Girard created 200 textile designs (and an even larger number of colorways) that infused the basic traditions of textile design with exuberance, playfulness and a curious, humanist spirit.

Alexander Girard 1907–1993

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Born in 1907 in New York to an American mother and French-Italian father, Alexander Girard and his family soon moved to Italy where he was raised in a Florentine villa surrounded by art and antiques. As a boy he filled notebooks with creative design sketches displaying an early attention to detail and interest in other cultures even imaging his own country with regional flags and unique symbolism. Inspiration from international folk art became a staple of his artistic legacy as he amassed thousands of artifacts from around the world. Girard studied architecture in Rome, London and New York as his influential and celebrated career began.

Girard designed and directed the groundbreaking show For Modern Living at the Detroit Institute of Fine Arts in 1949, a predecessor to the Good Design shows hosted by the Museum of Modern Art in New York which he eventually participated in and juried. While living in Michigan in 1952, he was hired by friend and collaborator Charles Eames at Herman Miller eventually establishing the company’s textile division as Director of Design until 1973. In addition to his collections of fabric and wallpaper, his “Environment Enrichment Panels” promoted humanization of the corporate workplace and in 1967 he released the “Girard Group” collection of furniture.

Girard applied vibrant color combinations, sensibility for arranging bold patterns, and passion for playful decoration to his work in textiles, interiors, furniture, graphics, communication and corporate design among many other disciplines. Throughout his career he lent his design to private commissions such as the high modernist Irwin Miller House in Columbus, Indiana with architect Eero Saarinen in 1957, the opulent Latin-American-themed restaurant interior of La Fonda del Sol that opened in 1960 inside the New York Time & Life Building, and a corporate redesign of all visual aspects of Braniff International Airways in 1965.

He challenged the modern aesthetic which rejected decoration and instead created a unique balance of craftsmanship and industry, expression and function, past and present. Known for his positive approach and thoughtful manner he elegantly melded different time periods and cultural backgrounds to create a distinct visual language.

Alexander Girard resided in Santa Fe, New Mexico until he died in 1993. His unique aesthetic vision and legacy is honored permanently by the Santa Fe Museum of International Folk Art’s Girard Wing and recently by a major retrospective from the archives at the Vitra Design Museum, Germany in 2016.

Auction Results Alexander Girard

Alexander Girard

Lounge chairs model 66310, pair

estimate: $7,000–9,000

result: $36,400

Alexander Girard

custom mural from the Irwin Union Bank & Trust Company, Columbus, IN

estimate: $5,000–7,000

result: $27,500

Alexander Girard

Custom mural from the Irwin Union Bank & Trust Company, Columbus, IN

estimate: $5,000–7,000

result: $26,000

Alexander Girard

settee for Braniff Airlines

estimate: $8,000–10,000

result: $22,500

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