The holiday season is now upon us, and festive décor is almost everywhere. The IMA’s Miller House is no exception. This will be the first holiday season that the Miller House and Garden has been open to the public, and while the home is not decorated to the extent of Oldfields, the IMA’s other historic property, visitors can still expect to see a few special holiday touches throughout the interior.

Holiday ornamentation at the Miller House will be minimal this year, partly due to the greatly reduced winter tour schedule, but also because the Miller House team is still inventorying the objects in the house and developing the program for collections rotation.

Nevertheless, visitors who have an affinity for Italian glass or crèche scenes will be pleased. Some of the pieces that were chosen to be on display at the Miller House this holiday season include two nativity scenes from Mrs. Miller’s extensive collection from around the world, and several small Murano glass Christmas trees.

An early 19th-century Ecuadorian crèche scene, displayed on the storage wall in a lighted enclosure designed by Alexander Girard, the talent behind the interior design of the home.

A Greek pottery crèche scene on the baker’s table in the main living area.

Several Murano glass Christmas trees in the living room and conversation pit.

A small enameled copper dish was discovered when conducting an inventory of the Miller House barn this past fall.

With the change of the seasons, we also decided to change some other elements of the interior that will remain on display well after the holidays are over.

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Alexander Girard, Interior plan (detail), Miller House and Garden papers, IMA Archives.

The opening of Miller House and Garden has been wildly successful, with sold out tours for five solid months.  The home where Cummins CEO J. Irwin and Xenia Miller raised their children illustrates the masterful skills of the renowned mid-century architect Eero Saarinen.  The garden, designed by Dan Kiley, offers a lush contrast to the stark structure.  But, the explosive colors, textures and folk art inspired by interior designer Alexander Girard give this house its soul.

Girard is perhaps best known as the textile designer for Herman Miller Furniture Company from 1952 to 1973. One of the pre-eminent designers of his generation, Girard’s work has experienced a surge in popularity in the last decade.  His spirited designs now can be found on Kate Spade bags, Electra bicycles and Urban Outfitters pillows.

In Columbus, Indiana, Girard-inspired designs have never fallen out of fashion.  His influence is a testament to the friendship he shared with the Millers, especially Xenia.

If you know where to look, you’ll see his handiwork throughout the city.  Start with North Christian Church, which is full of tell tale signs of Girard’s handiwork.  The church was yet another example of a collaboration between Saarinen, Kiley and Girard (Saarinen died three years before the church was completed in 1964).

North Christian Church.

Sitting at the center of the hexagonal sanctuary is a substantial communion table, ringed by 12 seats for the church elders. Throughout the year, the cushions on these seats will transition from green to red to purple to white, in step with the liturgical calendar. This mirrors an idea Girard incorporated successfully in the Miller’s home. Cushion covers and pillows in the conversation pit were changed with the seasons, featuring pale neutrals in warm months and deep reds in winter.  The interiors of both the Miller House and North Christian Church are clean, stark and neutral.  Girard switched out the textiles to transform the interiors with the changing seasons.

Girard added additional ornamentation inside the church, with elaborate rod-iron flower stands in the main sanctuary and candelabras of similar design in the baptistery.  Also in the sanctuary, one can sometimes see a brightly-colored “Tree of Life” appliqué, designed by Girard, although the piece is showing signs of wear and is rarely on display.

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People who live in glass houses shouldn’t ….you know the rest.  But perhaps the old adage could be just as meaningful if slightly rewritten: people who live glass houses need good curtain systems.  Modernist residences often incorporated prodigious quantities of glass, which meant that their designers had to think about how treat all those windows.

When thinking about glass houses, the first that leaps to mind of course is Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut – a shimmering glass pavilion without curtains or window coverings of any kind – a bold statement indeed.  But having no curtains did not mean that Johnson wished always to live in a fishbowl.  For those moments when even he desired privacy, Johnson retreated to the Brick House, a nearly windowless structure just steps away.

The more ordinary homes built for those of us with less-than-Johnsonian daring must accommodate our desire to have both light and views, as well as enclosure and privacy, depending on the hour of the day or whether one wishes to move about the house en déshabillé.  The Miller House was planned as a fully functioning family home, making privacy and control of light levels at the windows components of the program that architect Eero Saarinen had to accommodate.  One of the most memorable experiences that the house provides is impact of the views of the landscape and gardens through broad expanses of ceiling-height windows.

These, as well as smaller windows all required curtains.  In addition, two interior spaces, the den and the dining room, could be closed off from the main living area with curtains.

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Every so often, it’s a good idea to count your blessings. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, and others have given me this advice over the years – sometimes at moments when it’s the last thing I’ve wanted to do. That’s the point, after all – to slow down just enough to clear your head and get a different and – if the exercise is successful – more positive perspective.

Miller House & Garden.

The Miller House and Garden is a preservation project that has many blessings to count. I was reminded of this not long ago when I received a call from a gentleman in North Carolina who had become involved in efforts to preserve Richard Neutra’s Kronish House in Beverly Hills, California. Richard Neutra’s work is a defining element of California modernism – think of Julius Schulman’s photos of his Kauffman house in Palm Springs.  Unfortunately, the Kronish house is considered extremely vulnerable in Beverly Hills’ high-value real estate market and preservation-averse regulatory environment.

For the moment, it seems that the house has been granted a brief reprieve from demolition, which will allow Dion Neutra, Richard’s son, and others interested in the property to pursue a means to acquire the property and put it to a sympathetic use.  It will be a tremendous challenge, no doubt, but preservation is always a challenge, and each project presents its challenges in a unique fashion.

Richard Neutra's Kronish House (photo courtesy of Marc Angeles / Unlimited Style / August 1, 2011).

The Miller House and Garden project, in comparison with many others, almost seems to have had a charmed existence from the start.  While talking about the Kronish house with Dion Neutra, I became even more aware of the extraordinary alignment of stars that helped us along.

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Alexander Girard was involved in nearly every aspect of the design of the Miller House — a fact made obvious in the surviving documents that make up the Miller House and Garden archives at the IMA. Among the files is the correspondence between the Millers and Alexander Girard, and for a researcher of mid-20th century design these materials are a dream.

One of the treasures in the Miller House and Garden archives is a collection of over 1,000 3 x 5 inch index cards stored in a small file box. In the upper right hand corner of each card is a handwritten number, and on the front is typed information about items the Millers purchased with Girard’s assistance for the house.

Last spring Bradley Brooks, the Director of Historic Resources, and Annette Schlagenhauff, Associate Curator of Research, asked if I might be interested in helping them and IMA Archivist Jennifer Whitlock to make sense of what the archives contained. I immediately said yes. The House and Garden would be open in the spring of 2011, and the race was on to learn as much about the history of the house as possible.

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Filed under: IMA Staff, Miller House