This huge monograph on seminal dressmaker Alexander Girard covers just about each side of his unique occupation. One of the vital prolific mid-twentieth century designers, Girard’s paintings spanned many disciplines, together with cloth layout, photograph layout, typography, representation, furnishings layout, internal layout, product layout, showcase layout, and structure. Exhaustively researched and lovingly assembled via dressmaker Todd Oldham, this tome is the definitive will have to-have e book on Girard’s oeuvre.
Many of the designs featured right here have by no means prior to been printed. Oldham in moderation went thru the entire Girard archive to discover many treasures in addition to the entire so much recognizable works via Girard.
Girard is widely known for his daring, colourful, and iconic cloth designs for Herman Miller (1952-1975), which might be broadly featured. Those had been frequently featured along with furnishings designs via his contemporaries Charles and Ray Eames, and George Nelson. His designs for Los angeles Fonda del Sol eating place (1960) are an test with typography as a communique instrument and massive-scale environmental photograph. Textiles and Items (1961) used to be an overly influential New York retailer backed via Herman Miller that featured Girard’s designs impressed via his travels and folks artwork assortment. The Girard Basis (1962) homes his personal private and intensive selection of folks artwork, textiles, toys, and Items from world wide. His entire environmental layout for Braniff World Airlines (1965) gave him the chance to paintings in any respect scales with colour, images, textiles, and furnishings layout. He designed each side of the mission himself, from the minute-sized sugar packets and the price ticket counters to the photograph colours of the planes themselves.
Alexander Girard’s playful but refined designs proceed to encourage new generations of artists and architects. The breadth and scope of his paintings is really outstanding. This extremely expected tome is the primary prime retrospective of this very entire and prolific dressmaker, and has been painstakingly edited via popular New York-based totally dressmaker Todd Oldham.
Amazon Absolute best Books of the Month, December 2011: Designophiles, get started salivating: Alexander Girard is a showstopper of a e book, without equal tribute to Sandro’s astonishingly prolific inventive legacy. Edited via acclaimed dressmaker Todd Oldham with colourful textual content from Kiera Espresso, this “superb, swervy journey” explores Girard’s occupation with playful class. In 664 massive pages, it provides a visually surprising excursion of his existence and paintings, from sketchbooks, Items, and shuttle footage to his private properties, an infinite folks artwork assortment that turned into the Girard Basis, his well-known textiles for Herman Miller, and a beneficiant sampling of unbiased initiatives. We be told what impressed him (virtually the whole thing) and the way he labored (compulsively and joyfully). He designed interiors for 5 many years, and his plans had been all the time “unimaginably complete,” encompassing main points right down to customized fit holders. Girard created interiors that felt exuberantly human in an age that tended towards minimalism, and this e book is going past aesthetic enchantment to have fun the spirit of the person his grandchildren affectionately known as Mouse. –Mari Malcolm
