For three decades, Girard served as the founding director for Herman Miller’s textile division, saturating offices and homes with his signature dose of playful color and sense of joy. He’s best known for creating an immersive and integrated universe of textiles and fanciful objects, but his furniture and interior design can’t be missed. “I have no favorite material; anything can be used to create beauty if handled well,” he once said. Girard collaborated with architect Eero Saarinen throughout the 1950s to design the Miller House in Columbus, Indiana, and injected the modernist abode with intimacy and warmth. In the heart of the home, Girard textiles decorate the home’s genre-defining conversation pit, a sunken lounge area with built-in seating. And in the middle of that space was a classic Girard centerpiece: a brass, flower-shaped occasional table.