Esoteric Survey

  For their 100 year anniversary, Herman Miller is collaborating with Wright  on a  100-piece capsule collection of vintage pieces.  I was in LA last week for the opening at the Herman Miller showroom. You can view the entire collection  here .  George Nelson MAA, Like  Russel Wright had at Dragon Rock .  Joel Chen with his old friend from his 2011 Pacific Standard Time exhibition, Collecting Eames: The JF Chen collection . Daniel Ostroff (who curated Joel's exhibition) giving his seal of approval after inspecting the screws.  Amy Auscherman, archivist for Herman Miller, quizzing us on the Eames splint. She was sporting a Doyle Lane pendant for us Californians. All the rooms in the showroom are named after designers. The screen for an Alexander Girard textile panel is used for decoration in the Herman Miller office.

  Eames, Girard and Tackett MoMA Good Design Euro lamps, including Paavo Tynell Dog fire dogs

  I finally got my hands on a Magnet Master. Well, two of them. The 900 and 400 models. Arthur and Reno Carrara designed the Magnet Master in 1947. It was distributed by The Walker Art Center and promoted through their Everyday Art Quarterly.  Arthur was an architect-designer based in Chicago. Reno was his brother.  Arthur is in the middle. Source: Everyday Art Quarterly, Summer 1948 Seen in action in Everyday Arts Quarterly Also seen back in the day on Reference Library. More books JHQ, Jean Balmer and Enzo Mari It's always great to get more Balmer in my life. Tape measure with the Alexander Girard designed No-Sag logo. 

If you aren't already aware of this project, you should be.  TOAD (textiles, objects & documents) was created by Alexander Wendl in collaboration with Vince Bravo . They describe it as a privately curated, digital archive that explores historical textiles, objects, and documents from the mid-century period.  Their goal is to make to make private collections public. In addition to their own incredible collections, they include pieces from fellow collectors.  Their most recent post was on a personal favorite, Laverne International .  The ephemera stacks are deep at TOAD, with a major emphasis on Herman Miller. I'm super jealous of those boxes.   Vince has one of the (if not the) best Alexander Girard collections around.  The La Fonda del Sol post includes items from the collections of Alexander, Vince and Will-Wade Gray . I don't know what's more impressive, the fact that a single restaurant had that many matchbook designs or that Will has amassed so m...

Robert Maxwell, David Stewart and some Scandi-smalls. La Gardo Tackett for Architectural Pottery Alexander Girard fabric Pottery Shack yard stick. Pottery Shack was located on Coast Highway in South Laguna. It was established in 1936 with a truckload of Bauer factory seconds. In addition to production California dinnerware like Metlox, Vernon, Red Wing and Harker; they held pottery and glass blowing demonstrations. The work from the demonstrations was then sold in the shop.  If you've done much ceramic shopping in California, you have no doubt turned a few pots over to find "Pottery Shack" and a last name inscribed into the bottom. Some of them are decent and some not so much. Singleton is a name often seen, who turns out to be Rita. Lyman is another, but Taylor is the only one I could find a little information on.  Here's Jack Taylor at his Pottery Shack wheel in 1963. He moved to Laguna Beach in 1945. Trained as a  painter, he had never thrown a pot before moving to...

Alexander Girard: A Designer’s Universe  This exhibition, organized by Vitra Design Museum, was on display at the Palm Springs Art Museum during Modernism Week.  It included more than 400 pieces and was so rich and deep. I feel bad for anyone who wasn't able to see it so I'm going to post a ton of images.  When Girard was about 10 years old he created The Republic of Fife, which was part of a larger empire called Celestia. It included urban design layout, maps, flags, costumes, documents and even currency. This imaginary country was created when he was at boarding school in England.  One of the documents he created for Celestia.  In addition to how incredible this project was, the fact that it still exists is remarkable. Girard was obviously a collector, but he kept everything! Terrazzo planters he designed in the 1930s. 1940s furniture and mobile He designed the chair in 1944 Detrola radi...