Alexander Girard has quite the history with Herman Miller: he served as the founding director of the company’s textile division in 1952, and spent over two decades with the company — creating a swath of memorable pieces from the playful Color Wheel Ottoman to the invigorating Environmental Enrichment Panels. “I have no favorite material,” Girard once said. “Anything can be used to create beauty if handled well.”
Now, Herman Miller is giving one of Girard’s designs a wide release for the first time: the Girard Flower Table, a brass structure that boats scalloped edges on its round top and a repeating, petal-shaped pattern at its base. The Girard Flower Table originally debuted as part of the Miller House in Columbus, Indiana, a home that Girard designed in collaboration with the famed architect Eero Saarinen — and it sat at the middle of a lush conversation pit.
In 2022, Girard Studio — an organization founded and ran by Girard’s children to promote and preserve his designs — worked with Vitra to bring the table back to market, and now Herman Miller has taken over production duties for the table as well as making it available in North America for the first time ever.
It’s now made of powder-coated steel instead of brass, making it acceptable for both indoor and outdoor use, and is available in both anthracite and red as well as small and large sizes (the various sizes and colors were made to seamlessly stand alone or together).
“What Girard brought to modern design was a warmness and a humanity. He wasn’t afraid of using textures and bright colors, which [his collegue] George Nelson and Herman Miller embraced,” said Amy Auscherman, the head of archives and brand heritage at MillerKnoll. ““He brought a levity to an otherwise cold perception of modernism at the time, which came through in every room of the Miller House and other well-known interiors he designed.”
You can purchase the Girard Flower Table via the Herman Miller webstore now as well as at Herman Miller and MillerKnoll dealers. The small table is priced at $995 USD, while the large table retails for $1,295 USD.
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