Vitra - Wooden Doll Cat miniature

Alexander Girard’s wooden dolls are a large family of wooden figures representing human and animal characters. Girard designed them in 1952 for personal use as decorative objects in his home in Santa Fe. The original models, which are part of the Girard estate in the properties of the Vitra Design Museum, served as the basis for the current reissues. Accurately replicated down to the last detail, the numerous wooden dolls are still manufactured and painted by hand, just like the vintage pieces by Alexander Girard. And even if the differences between them are only minimal: each wooden figure is a unique product, truly unique.

Alexander Girard

Alexander Girard; Born in 1907 in New York City, he was one of the leading figures of postwar American design, along with his close friends and colleagues George Nelson and Charles & Ray Eames. The main focus of his wide-ranging work was textile design. The designer has created numerous fabrics for the Herman Miller Company, favoring abstract shapes and geometric patterns in a wide variety of color compositions. Many of his upholstery fabrics remain as timely and vital as ever and are still produced and used by Vitra today. After studying architecture, he made a name for himself over his long career in the fields of furniture, exhibition, interior and graphic design. Furthermore, he was one of the foremost collectors of folk art in the world. Multifaceted, extremely creative, he was recently celebrated in the exhibition “Alexander Girard. A Designer's Universe” at the Vitra Design Museum. After the designer's death in 1993, his heirs donated the Girard archive (including hundreds of drawings, prototypes and samples) to the Vitra Design Museum. In 2016/17, the museum staged the exhibition “Alexander Girard: A Designer's Universe”.

Vitra

Vitra is a Swiss company that produces furniture and interior design. Known for producing the works of important designers and architects.The headquarters are located in Weil am Rhein, Germany, where the famous Vitra Design Museum is also located.This story starts in the post-war years, when two Americans, both architects, Charles and Ray Eames, decided to help a furniture dealer.The collaboration led them to design and then produce masterpieces for interior design, which are still very current today.