Marilyn Neuhart 1930 - 2017

As I entered the Girard wing at the Museum of International Folk Art here in Santa Fe, I stopped abruptly and had to catch my breath, stunned at how much it "felt" and resembled the interior of the Neuhart house in Hermosa Beach, CA. It comes of no surprise of course, given that Alexander Girard and Marilyn Neuhart formed a creative partnership in 1961 when she created embroidered dolls for his Textiles & Objects shop in NYC.

Although I had visited the museum and Girard wing in the 80's with Ben, Marilyn's son, the shock of the shared kindred spirit of these two designers was much more palatable, perhaps because of her recent departure from this earthy realm.

Marilyn was born on March 3, 1930, in Long Beach, California. Her birth date 03-30-30 seems extremely auspicious with all those three's and zeros. Three is the number of Venus and the Empress, it is associated with imagination, creativity and the artist.

I always felt Marilyn knew she was an Empress, especially when I remember her sitting at the head of the Thanksgiving table with her feast spread out for everyone to not only savor but also take in the beauty of her orchestration.

She attended Long Beach public schools, Long Beach City College and UCLA. Marilyn began her long career as a freelance designer in the Los Angeles area since her graduation. She taught design, painting and color theory at UCLA, UCLA Extension and at East Los Angeles Junior College.

Marilyn and her husband John Neuhart, worked together professionally since their marriage, and collaborated on numerous design projects, including graphics, films and exhibitions. From 1980 to 1998 they were partners in the design firm Neuhart Donges Neuhart, whose clients included the IBM Corporation, Herman Miller, Inc., The Huntington Library and Art Gallery, the Doheny Library, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Government of Taiwan and local businesses and institutions.

John and Marilyn authored and designed of three books on the history of the Eames Office. The first was Eames Design (1989) followed by Eames House (1994) and the two book set The Story of Eames Furniture, a comprehensive history of furniture development in the Eames Office.

Together John and Marilyn were an inspirational team, working together to create beautiful invites to dinner parties at their home, labels and cards for the holidays or the magnificent doll house that took over six years to create for Eve. Below are a few details of the doll house, including a tiny basket with three of Marilyn's dolls as miniatures. The bright, colorful palette and since of whimsy that was part of their signature weaves throughout every part of their life.

The day Ben and I graduated from Otis College of Art and Design, back in the eighties, Marilyn made us glorious crowns for us to wear that were given to us in a special box made by John. Talk about feeling special! 

There is also a photo of her with Ray Eames and John sitting on the lawn of MacArther Park waiting the graduation ceremony to begin. I believe the photo was taken by her son Andrew Neuhart.

I'd love to share more pictures of their truly wonderful and very authentic style, but the CD's are in a box some where within the scary storage closet here in our temporary rental. I'm not sure if I can readily find it.  I'll take a look in a few weeks when my time should be a but more expansive. What's become quite obvious, as I sift through all the photos of John and Marilyn over the last thirty plus years, is that I'll be sharing more about them and their legacy as designers.

Here's a little quote from Marilyn...

"I started to quilt when I was a small child sitting with my mother and my aunts 

over a quilting frame. I continued to sew, albeit intermittently, as I went through 

high school and college. After I left teaching for a period and with two small children, 

I became a fulltime freelance graphic designer and once again took up my needle in earnest. 

After making small cloth dolls for my children and friends, I made a doll for designer 

Alexander Girard, who asked me to make a large number of them the new Textiles & Objects 

shop he was designing in New York City for the Herman Miller Furniture Company. 

Over the next few years  (in the early 1960's), I made nearly 2,000 dolls 

for the shop and for  Girard's exhibition projects." 

Read more about Marilyn by jumping to this little blog I created for her back in 2007 as Christmas gift, naively thinking she might want to contribute to it by sharing her wit, sense of design, inspiration, recipes and abundant stories. In hind site, it was most likely a projection on my part, I was so inspired, in awe actually, by her sense of style and her very Aires take charge and get things done attitude.

Once I asked her how she had managed to do so much as a mother of two children, wife, designer, cook and creator extraordinaire, etc., her response was..."Just keep going, without thinking about it." Hence her chosen name for the blog "Don't Be A Bump on a Blog." She had absolutely no patience for laziness. As I edit this post, adding more memories and photos, it occurs to me that perhaps I will add more on her blog, building it as a resource for those of you her are inspired by her as well as John.

Besides having a great sense of color, pattern, texture, design and flavor, she was also a bit of a sensualist. Marilyn liked to take baths and enjoyed beautiful scents. Her favorite fragrances were 4711 and roses, the photo below is a vintage bottle of the illustrious perfume that she had in the guest bathroom. I would gift her bottles of my Blossom cologne and bath salts for the holidays and her birthday.

Lucky for us, House Industries worked with Marilyn and John to recreate some of their wonderful designs such as a poster of the hand print, which I've always been a huge fan of.

Marilyn passed on September 1st, 2017 just as Greg and I were driving through the desert on our way to Santa Fe. In a way, one of the many reasons I am living in Santa Fe today is because of Marilyn. She and her fabulous style which will live on for years to come, especially if books about her creative life and dolls are published. Marilyn was an integral thread in the Mid Century modern design revolution whose craft-womanship is an inspiration, particularly to all the makers who are part of the current DIY culture.

See more of the Neuhart house and Marilyn's fantastic style in a few of these posts here at the journal.

Photos: Museum of International Folk Art,  John and Marilyn's home in Hermosa Beach, a variety of shots at the Neuhart house of Marilyn's embroidery, quilt, handprint, 4711 perfume bottle and Mexican statues display.

Edited April 13, 2018

The Architect and the Painter

The film Charles & Ray Eames: The Architect and the Painter is available to watch online at PBS. It is a great snapshot into the lives of the two most influential designers of our era. Plus you get to hear from some of the designers that worked with them, like John and Marilyn.

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

On the day of graduation from the Otis College of Art and Design in downtown LA several factors united to produce one incredibly magical day. It was May 1985, the school was located in downtown Los Angeles in what at the time was considered to be the murder capital of the world. MacArther Park across the street had been cleared out of the derelicts and arranged for the ceremony in a palette of festive 80's colors.


Marilyn had made Ben and I beautiful crowns to wear that day. Just before the ceremony, I was called into the office of the Communication Arts department head, Shelia Levrant de Bretteville. Shelia offered me a teaching position at Otis beginning next month with the high school summer program. I was thrilled, especially since this was the program I had attended during the summer between high school and college which ultimately resulted in attending Otis.


The commencement speaker for the graduation was local artist David Hockney, wearing his trademark non matching socks. After the ceremony I was invited to a dinner with Ben, his parents and friends of the family. One of these family friends was the design icon Ray Eames.

I was not aware of Ray and Charles Eames until I went to art school and met my first husband Ben. For the most part I was pretty clueless about graphic design until entering Otis in the autumn of 1981. Having Ben , who had grown up around all things graphic design and Eames broadened my awareness profoundly. I even considered a major in design instead of illustration, with one friend urging me to become an art director because of my conceptual skills.

At the graduation dinner Ray Eames gifted me with an ultra modern black designer pen which I used daily until the ink ran out. That was one really special day as I stand here, in the world of natural perfume, on this rose strewn road looking back at all those sign posts.

"There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. If one could but recall his vision by some sort of sign. It was in this hope that the arts were invented. Sign-posts on the way to what may be. Sign-posts toward greater knowledge." ~ Robert Henri

Yesterday Ben sent me the trailer for a new film about Charles and Ray I can't wait to see it! The crown Charles is wearing in one of the photos was made by Marilyn. Marilyn and John both appear in the film.



Photos by Andrew Neuhart, Patch, from an Otis Continuing Education Catalog cover designed by Jeffrey Vallance

John Neuhart 1928-2011

Graphic designer John Neuhart transitioned from this Earthly realm today at noon. Although we knew his departure was approaching it is still a shock and a pull on the heart strings. I met John during art school at Otis via Ben. Johns love of letterpress, typography and fastidious attention to detail were huge inspirations to my creative life. It's a comfort that much of his letterpress equipment now resides in the back studio where Ben and I plan on starting up projects in October.


John was a detail master, a titan of organizational thinking and orchestrating space. He would take enormous amounts of time and attention to hand make items like the dollhouse for Eve when she was born, which took seven years or a simple box to house a crown made by Marilyn.

The Eames office scale model took ten years to make, between 2001-2010. Constructed on a one-quarter inch to one-foot scale, the model is a replica of the Eames Office at the time of Charles Eames death in August of 1978. Painstakingly constructed over nearly a decade John, with the assistance of Marilyn, aimed to recreate the office with precision. With a demountable roof and cross beams the model reveals the 10,000 square foot interior equipped with appropriately-scaled furniture, the equipment and tools of the Eames Design Office, as well as the graphic displays decorating the walls at that time. The model was sold as part of an auction to the Vitra Museum in Switzerland.
Marilyn and John's most recent project was the two volume set The Story of Eames Furniture which was published in the Autumn 2010. Here is a video on Vimeo with both Marilyn and John being interviewed.



The Story of Eames Furniture: Marilyn Neuhart with John Neuhart - Interview from Gestalten on Vimeo.

John attended Long Beach Jordan High School and from there went on to Long Beach City College where he met Marilyn. After receiving their degrees they attended the University of California at Los Angeles, where John would eventually teach typography and graphic design while working at Eames office with Charles and Ray.

Eventually Marilyn and John opened their own office, Neuhart Donges Neuhart (NDN), with friend and associate Richard Donges. They created environmental graphics for the Mathematica show at the IBM building in NYC and designed the torch for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. John had a brief career in the film industry working ona montage in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but his real love and gift was as a teacher, he retired from UCLA as a full Professor Emertus in 1984.


During college it was a treat to visit John and Marilyn's home in Hermosa Beach or their studio in El Segundo. Their modern design sense was magnetic as well as the awe inspiring collection of books which was easy to get lost in for hours. If I ever felt a lack of creativity all I needed to do was visit that amazing compilation of books on every subject imaginable.

My camera has still not arrived thus pictures of Johns beautiful creations will be posted here later along with other links as I am sure many people will be sharing stories about him throughout the internet and print.


We live in this world with full consciousness that one day we or another being in our lives will pass from this dimension onto another. Despite this knowing, western culture still hasn't quite figured out how to embrace the process with consciousness. John left his mortal coil in his home surrounded by loving family members. Please join me in sending him light as he enters a new journey.

October 11, 2011 tribute to John: UCLA Design Media Arts / Faculty

Photos: Graduation day from Otis college at MacArthur Park in May 1984, pictured from left to right John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, myself and Ben Neuhart. The crowns Ben and I are wearing were made by Marilyn, photo by Andrew Neuhart. Black and white photo of John in 1957 from Ben Neuhart. The hand image was designed Marilyn Neuhart and used as a bookplate. I took the angel photo on Christmas day 2011 at John and Marilyn's home.