Alexander Girard
1907 to 1993
Architect, textile designer, and collector. Ran the textile division at Herman Miller for twenty years and built a whole career from a few fixed shapes moved, repeated, and cut: the Herman Miller fabrics, the suns of La Fonda del Sol, the Braniff redesign, the Environmental Enrichment Panels, the wooden dolls. Kept ten thousand folk art objects, now the Girard Wing in Santa Fe.
Elsewhere
5- Environmental Enrichment Panels1972The Henry Ford; Herman Millerand hereForty wall panels for the first office cubicles. Eyes, hearts, hands, suns, all from circles, bars, and triangles. Herman Miller reprinted eight as posters.
- La Fonda del Sol1960SFMOMAOne restaurant, more than eighty different suns. Same circle, different rays, on matchbooks, menus, and platters.
- Textiles for Herman Miller1952 onwardMaharam still weaves severalSmall Triangles, Double Triangles, Quatrefoil, Trispot. Tangent shapes where the only variable is which color lands where.
- Wooden Dolls1952 onwardVitraA post, a ball, and a bar, with a face painted on.
- Multiple Visions: A Common Bond1982Museum of International Folk Art, Santa FeThe ten thousand folk art objects he collected, arranged by him. Where the shapes came from.