Vase by Tunsi Girard

PLEASE NOTE: THIS PIECE IS CURRENTLY ON HOLD

A colorful vase by Tunsi Girard, Florentine ceramist and brother of "designer's designer" Alexander Girard. Tunsi and Alexander grew up in Italy (their father was French-Italian, and their mother American), and while Alexander spent his adult life in the USA, Tunsi remained in Italy.

The two brothers were very close, and even devised their own language with which they would communicate. The imaginary worlds they evidently created together are echoed in both of the brothers' adult work, which retained the playful quality common to both childhood and vernacular art.

Tunsi's ceramics had this joyful, folk-art quality in spades, and they were thus eminently suited to be sold in Herman Miller showrooms in the 1960s, alongside many other carefully curated objects now revered by collectors of that Golden Age of American design.

Tunsi's work -- so much of a piece with his brother's aesthetic -- was also much used by Alexander Girard in his interior designs, notably in the magnificent J. Irwin Miller House, in Columbus, Indiana.

This vase, made at Tunsi's studio in Florence, is a very representative example of his work.