Petit Glam is a Japanese publication dedicated to writing stories about design and about the people who have significantly impacted the design world. As part of its research for the 2003 Modern Crafts issue featuring Alexander Girard, Petit Glam made a trip to New Mexico to visit the máXimo studios. During this visit, máXimo arranged for Petit Glam to interview John and Marilyn Neuhart, friends and colleagues of Alexander Girard and the Eames. The Neuharts are graphic and exhibition designers, teachers, and authors of the definitive Eames book, Eames Design (Abrams). John worked full-time at the Eames office in Los Angeles from 1957 until 1961. Both John and Marilyn were born in Long Beach, and now live in Hermosa Beach, California. In 2002 Petit Glam, represented by Laura Forde and Takaya Goto, met the Neuharts at the Los Poblanos Inn in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the following interview was conducted. (Note: friends of Girard referred to him as Sandro, a shortened version of his full Italian name.) 
 
When did you first meet Alexander Girard? 
 
Marilyn: We began working with Sandro in 1956, he was already in Santa Fe. He was quiet, small... he looked more like a lawyer than a designer, immaculately turned out. We started out working with him via mail, because there were not a lot of graphic services in Santa Fe. I think we first met him in person in 1957 at the Eames Office in Los Angeles. He was tough, very demanding, but not in a bombastic way, and never had a real display of ego, like Charles Eames did. He was meticulous about the pre-planning of projects, and employed a guy named Doc, who helped build full-scale models and make big fabrication things for him. He also worked with a guy named Jeremy Lepard for many years. His wife Susan helped handle the business and finances. Sandro and Susan were great to work for because you'd do something for them, and send them an invoice, and you'd get paid immediately. If you didn't send an invoice they would call and ask you “Where's your invoice?” He didn't have a big payroll like the Eames office. 
 
What was Susan Girard like? 
 
Marilyn: She was smart, capable and lovely. Susan's maiden name was Needham, and she was from upstate New York. Her family had connections to the Ford family. It was really a love match between the two of them. He used to make these wonderful anniversary and birthday gifts for Susan. I believe they met in the 1930s in New York. 
 
What do you think made them move to Grosse Point? 
 
Marilyn: Well, Grosse Point was a pretty wealthy area, and many people there were connected to the Ford Family, and to the other automotive industries. Sandro immediately found work there: he designed offices for people, and graphics. He also opened a little shop, called Girard's, out of a converted hamburger stand. He was one of the first shops to have Eames chairs and modernist furniture in the late thirties and early forties. So Sandro established himself rapidly in Grosse Pointe, he did a mix of things: interiors, he did architecture, retail shops. He redid the cafeteria at Detrola (a radio company). He loved projects where he could do it all. 
 
John: He was a registered architect in Michigan and New York, but he never created any buildings, like Eero Saarinen did. He was really interested in what was in the building. He told me once: “I am really interested in creating atmospheres.” 
 
When did Girard meet Charles Eames? 
 
Marilyn: Sandro was designing plywood radios, for Detrola, in the early forties. At around the same time, without knowledge of Girard's work, the Eames Office was working on molded plywood cases for radios. Charles eventually heard about Girard's radios, so in the summer of 1946, when he was visiting Cranbrook, he went over to Detrola to meet Girard, and brought with him one of the radio housings he had designed, but Girard wasn't there. Charles left the radio housing for Girard with a note, and eventually they got together, and became friends. When Girard did the 1949 exhibition “For Modern Living,” he invited the Eames Office to be part of it. “For Modern Living” was a pivotal point for Girard – he was really becoming a national figure in design. Charles wasn't a great one for making friends, but Charles and Sandro stayed friends, I think, because they were so different. 
 
What was the creative climate like in the post war years?  
 
John: People look back at exhibitions like “Good Design,” and think it was a quaint notion for the museum to referee what was good and what was bad design, but you know, you have to consider: you had the depression, then you had the emergence of Scandinavian design in this country, and that sort of set the stage... Then the war came along and you had the development of electronic technology, and plastics... 
 
Marilyn: At the end of the war there were so many designers who wanted to take advantage of these developments. It just exploded. There was so much pent up intellectual energy... We were in school at that time, and had incredible role models. I don't know if that purity exists anymore... 
 
Tell us about The Herman Miller Company. 
 
Marilyn: Herman Miller was a bunch of Dutch guys who had never seen a pure color in their lives! But D. J. De Pree (head of Herman Miller at the time) really liked Girard. All of the De Prees really considered Girard to be a moral person. And George Nelson too, despite all his drinking and swearing, but not Charles! (laughs) At that time, Zeeland, Michigan was almost 100% Dutch. It was a very religious community with a lot of craftsmen. The De Prees were an interesting bunch, D. J. lived to be almost 100 years old. 
 
D. J. De Pree of Herman Miller must have been very progressive. Wasn't it a unique situation, the three designers for a company like Herman Miller, one in New York (Nelson), one in Los Angeles (Eames) and one in Santa Fe (Girard)? How did that work? 
 
John: George Nelson was the center of it, He was the design director of Herman Miller, and he helped bring in Charles, and then Girard, but what made it work is that the three actually had very separate areas. Unlike Charles and Girard, George was a brilliant, brilliant writer. He was a much better writer than designer. So here you have Nelson, who from Charles's point of view, was too smart for his own good... 
 
Marilyn: Nelson was really articulate, could speak beautifully...and write! His books on design from the late fifties and sixties are fantastic books... Charles didn't write, when he spoke in public, he mumbled... 
 
John: ... but he used it for dramatic effect. 
 
Marilyn: I think he was acting, I always thought he missed his calling. He was very charismatic, he wanted to make it look easy, even though it was blood, sweat and tears all the way... but I don't think it was blood, sweat and tears with Sandro: He'd define the problem, go about everything in a very systematic way: do everything on time, get it there on time, and then when it was over, it was over – he'd clear it all off and start the next thing. He really saw the big picture, whereas Charles had to go to the core of each project, and extract the essence... It was agonizing. I think Girard trusted his own instincts more. 
 
John: He'd strip the thing down to very simple elements. I'd start talking about a possible solution, and all the ways it could work, and he'd say; “Too complicated!” (laughs) 
 
So Eames and Girard were quite different. 
 
Marilyn: Charles was interested in more intellectual projects than Sandro. He was extremely interested in science. It wasn't that Sandro wasn't intellectual, he was. He was actually much better educated than Charles. He had the benefit of money and good family connections, which Charles never had. Also, Charles rarely did anything himself, except for photography, whereas Girard was really a craftsperson, he did many things himself. He was very self-sufficient. He had a fantastic eye that never deserted him, even when he was well into Alzheimer's. 
 
John: There is a statement Sandro wrote about toys, which was so uncomplicated. For Charles, toys demonstrated some principle, Girard was more purely visual. Charles would find a toy, and have to change it. Sandro could appreciate a toy just as it was. He would often combine it with other things to create something new. 
 
Marilyn: Sandro was soft-spoken, he hated to speak publicly. He had a calming effect on people. He was demanding, but not in a bombastic way, you never had any doubt that he was in charge. Charles was a self-promoter, he was very charismatic. He would say, “Here's a little thing we've been working on.” He made it look so easy, meanwhile John and everyone at the office was working day and night on it, bleary eyed and exhausted. Sandro didn't have that kind of charisma, and didn't care about it really. 
 
John: He never had any real display of ego. 
 
Marilyn: His only vice was that he didn't have a vice (laughs). 
 
Girard was a voracious collector, even though he didn't like the word. Wasn't Ray Eames quite a collector too? 
 
Marilyn: Ray was an accumulator, not really a collector. Nothing that systematic ever happened to Ray. The Eameses acquired things, but I wouldn't call them collectors. Girard was a collector, even though he didn't like the word. He was so organized, you can't believe...He had these notebooks covered in Florentine papers with the Girard Foundation trademark. It wasn't something he was forced to do, he just loved putting things in order. 
 
John: Sandro hated the amount of time the Eames office spent shooting and archiving things. He wasn't interested in the camera. He'd go off and whittle something, make something for Susan. 
 
And when did he first visit Mexico? 
 
Marilyn: I think Jere Lepard went there when Girard was living in Grosse Point and came back and told him about it, but Charles used to take credit for introducing him to Mexico. It's unclear I guess. 
 
John: I was with him in Juarez, Mexico and we were getting stuff for Braniff, booze to put in the bar... 
 
Marilyn: Not just booze, but beautifully bottled booze... 
 
John: ...but in between looking for the booze, we'd go into places and he'd say: “How much is that?” and they would say so much, and then he'd say, “Okay, do you have more?” and they'd go back and check and come out and say “I have six more,” and he'd say, “Can you get more?”(laughs). He would finally get to the point that he would find the person making the stuff and he'd ask, “Now, can you make me a whole village?” 
 
What was Girard's inspiration, with color for instance? 
 
Marilyn: Being part Italian, living in Italy, I don't know if it was anything terribly deep, he just liked it, he had an affinity for it. The Eameses even used pure color during that period. I remember, I had this red car, and Ray Eames used to always say, “I didn't know you had a red car!” even though she had seen my car dozens of times. Then she would add, “You know, Charles doesn't like pure color!” which was true: Charles liked black, and umber, but mostly black. He liked the furniture to be manufactured in black leather, or black vinyl. There were three colors: elephant hide grey; “greige” between grey and beige; and parchment. Charles really hated the custom orders for 2000 orange chairs...that made him crazy. 
 
Really? That is surprising. 
 
John: Well, later, something that softened him up was that Sandro had developed these fabrics, and made the choice of the colors of the Naugahyde – so chairs could be made in parchment, grey or greige – but then you could get all kinds of different colored covers for the chair, which Charles loved. Sandro's contribution there is a major one. 
 
Was Girard's furniture a success? 
 
Marilyn: The Girard Group Furniture? I never liked it very much. It seemed to be that the legs never got resolved, they still make me uncomfortable. He said he stayed out of furniture in deference to Charles, although, he did work on the La Fonda chair. Where I think he really broke ground was in his use of color on furniture: one color on the back, another color on the seat. Back in Michigan, Girard was doing simple plywood furniture. For the house in Grosse Point, he had curved walls, couches built in, they weren't furniture per se, they were architectural elements. 
 
Tell us about the Textile & Object Shop. 
 
Marilyn: T&O was this beautiful little expression of everything that ever mattered to Sandro: toys and folk art and textiles and colors and furniture and all of that... He always had in his mind to do this wonderful shop in New York where you could buy folk art from all over the world. At that time Herman Miller fabrics were only available wholesale, and Sandro wanted people to be able to buy yardage. He pushed the De Prees, so they decided to give it a whirl, and they rented a place on 53rd Street. It was really Girard's baby: He designed and had built all of the storage and the display, all of which was very expensive... I made dolls for the store, but ultimately it didn't attract the clientele that Girard was hoping for. When the shop closed, he just, well, he was upset about it. After that, I don't think he felt the same about Herman Miller. He still did a lot of work for them as well, for another ten years or so. 
 
John: The T&O Shop was the last element that touched the individual. By the seventies, I think Girard had written Herman Miller off, and he used to say things like: “That's a lot of Miller-ese.” 
 
Do you think the T&O Shop is the project he was most proud of? 
 
Marilyn: Well, I think it would be the show up at the Folk Art Museum. By the time it was installed and it had opened, it was December of 1982, and we felt that he was already in the Alzheimer's mode. I don't know that he had the presence of mind after that to be totally cognizant of what he had actually accomplished... But I think, if he had the wherewithal to realize it, he would have been most proud of the exhibition. I mean this was the culmination of a lifetime dream, to do this... 
 
John: A lot of things you see in the show here, I think were seminal expressions of what became the ultimate expression of that show, which were to take things and put them in a context, so you're not just seeing these things the way museums normally show stuff as an isolated artifact. You see it in a kind of context. 

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