See more objects with the tag graphic design, upholstery, domestic interiors, curtain, furnishing fabric, textile design, numbers, typography, sample book, letters.

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Object Timeline

1960	Work on this object began.
2000	We acquired this object.
2012	We photographed this object.
2013	This was an Object of the Day.
2024	You found it!

Sample, Alphabet

This is a Sample. It was designed by Alexander Hayden Girard and produced by Herman Miller Textiles and manufactured by American Art Textile Printing Company, Inc.. It is dated 1960 and we acquired it in 2000. Its medium is cotton and its technique is screen printed on plain weave. It is a part of the Textiles department.

When do graphic design and textile design merge and overlap? The great mid-century designer Alexander Girard is best known for his work as founding director of the Herman Miller Textile Division, a post he held from 1952 through 1973. There, working alongside such design legends as George Nelson and Charles and Ray Eames, he created a vast range of textiles that complemented and completed the era’s groundbreaking furnishings. Although nubby textures and neutral stripes abound in Girard’s textile oeuvre, his most memorable designs are distinctly graphic in character.
Alphabet, designed in 1960, features a densely packed jumble of randomly sequenced characters. The quirky, blocky text defies reading but functions beautifully as a texture, its forms melding into an overall pattern with a hard-to-find repeat. The design is at once gridded and organic, orderly and irregular. Creating text that you can’t read is the goal of most pattern designs built out of letters. Such designs aim to channel the abstract qualities of type—their lines and curves, their individuality, their family relationships—into fields of graphic marks liberated from the task of direct communication.

This object was featured in our Object of the Week series in a post titled Alphabet.

This object was donated by Alexander Hayden Girard. It is credited Gift of Alexander H. Girard.

Sidewall, Pause
screen-printed vinyl.
Gift of Knoll Textiles.
2006-25-1

Typography samples of a phonetic alphabet, spelling various words using some special characters. Three sheets of white paper with two columns of black printed sans serif text and small red handwritten numbers are cut and adhered to white cardstock. Two words in the middle of the right column ('sERtAinly' and 'idEntikl') are cut from beige paper, with yellowy residue surrounding the area. 'SERTnLY' is pencilled below this patch. Handwritten in the top left corner is 'FOR REFERENCE ONLY', underlined twice. The special characters are like altered letters: an upside-down v, an upside-down u, a downturned E, a smushed w, an upturned c, an angular d, with or without a dash in the enclosed space, a ligatured i n, an open q, curvy or angular, with a short vertical line at the top, an h, stem crossed with a short horizontal stroke, an angular s, an upside-down u with a long, curved right end, with or without a dot at top left, a diamond shape with a vertical or diagonal line at bottom corner.

Print, Fonetik Alphabet Sample
prints on pieces of white and tan paper, adhered to white paper, with pen and....
Museum purchase with funding provided by the Buddy Taub Foundation, Dennis A.....
2016-54-424

Its dimensions are

H x W: 60 x 60 cm (23 5/8 x 23 5/8 in.)

It has the following markings

Herman Miller Textiles paper label attached to lower right corner.

Cite this object as

Sample, Alphabet; Designed by Alexander Hayden Girard (American, 1907–1993); Produced by Herman Miller Furniture Company (United States); Manufactured by American Art Textile Printing Company, Inc.; cotton; H x W: 60 x 60 cm (23 5/8 x 23 5/8 in.); Gift of Alexander H. Girard; 1969-165-164

Short URL http://cprhw.tt/o/2DJjK/
Accession Number 1969-165-164
Object ID 18678015