We like to high light the lives of famous designers of the twentieth
century. Alexander Girard, 1907 – 1993 is a American born,
multicultural architect trained twentieth century designer of note. His
mother, an American married his father, a Frenchman, after his birth in
New York City, they moved to Florence, Italy where he was educated. He
was trained as an Architect, but his design talents varied over a wide
arrange of objects and materials. He honed his skills both in Italy,
where he was exposed to some of the greatest architect designers of the
period and in New York.
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| Alexander Girard 1907-1993 |
He is particularly know for his
Textile design work on the cutting edge of design though his work for
Herman Miller Design 1952-1975. He worked creating fabrics for
furniture designer by George Nelson, and Charles and Ray Eames.
Together they formed a design team that has influenced the fundamentals
of design not only in the United States but the entire rest of the
world. His designs were based on geometrical shapes and forms related
to architectural forms.
He designed for the Braniff Airlines
in the 1960's. This was an effort on the part of Braniff to end the
rein of the plain plane. He worked on everything from the fabrics, the
color of the plane itself, the ticket counters even the sugar paper
packets. Braniff had also hired Emilio Pucci to design the flight
attendants uniforms. Girard's colors ranged from both light and dark
shades of blue to turquoise, oranges, beige, and tonal yellow. These
colors were used on the planes themselves to make them identifiable with
the Braniff brand. He designed a line of furniture for their ticket
offices and the customer lounges, this was produced by Herman Miller and
was available to the public in 1967 for one year only.
He
designed the interiors of several major restaurants all over the
world. He did table settings for George Jensen, 1956, that included
flat ware, china and mats. Girard designed a Mural for the John Deere company. It consisted of found three dimensional objects. In 1956, along with Charles Eames, he produced the documentary film, " The Day of The Dead." Girard brought Italian style to American design. He was a Renaissance man.
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| Designs by Alexande Girard |
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Girard
and his wife were collectors of folk art. They accumulated a large
collection from all over the world. They founded The Girard Foundation,
1962, to house their huge collection of Folk Art.
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| Fabric Design by Girard |
