A Colorful Life: Gere Kavanaugh, Designer
$40.00
“A Colorful Life: Gere Kavanaugh, Designer, the first monograph on Kavanaugh’s life and work, tells her story through a fascinating avalanche of visual material. The book by fellow Southern California designers Louise Sandhaus and Kat Catmur surveys Kavanaugh’s seven decades of work, which reveals a dazzling wealth of intuition and talent, plus her elastic ability to distill the present moment like a true marble-walker.” — Los Angeles Times
“Gere Kavanaugh is an inventor and an explorer looking for and making beautiful spaces, objects, and textiles. She is restless and relentless, and I am so proud that her accomplishments are being published for all to study.” — Frank Gehry
by Louise Sandhaus and Kat Catmur
The designer Gere Kavanaugh is an irrepressible force of nature who epitomized the craft and folk vibe of the ’60s and ’70s California design scene and remains a larger-than-life personality today. Raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Kavanaugh became in 1952 only the third woman to earn a degree in Cranbrook Academy of Art’s design program. After successful stints as one of GM’s so-called Damsels of Design and as director of interiors for Victor Gruen’s architecture and planning firm, she opened Gere Kavanaugh/Designs. There, Kavanaugh put her unique stamp on textiles, furniture, toys, graphics, store and restaurant interiors, holiday decor, housewares, and public art—even designing and curating exhibitions. But perhaps her most enduring project has been the joyful, open-ended, ongoing experiment of her own lifestyle and homes, a dream of color and handcraft. Kavanaugh was awarded the AIGA Medal in 2016, recognizing her “prodigious and polymathic approach to design.”
Hardcover | 220 pages | Princeton Architectural Press | 2019
In stock
