10 Things to Know about George Nakashima Furniture

Influenced by Japanese, Indian, and Modernist philosophy, the father of the American craft movement, George Nakashima, brought the natural beauty of wood to everyone’s attention through his resourceful devotion to natural resources that would make him one of the few American designers rightly lauded as a 20^th century master woodworker.

Today, the aesthetic influence of George Nakashima furniture is everywhere. Just look around. From imitation designs in popular mass-market furniture stores, to the rise in popularity of live (or wany) edge furniture and hip cafes decked in Nakashima-influenced designs, Nakashima’s influence as a furniture maker who helped to define 20th century design is almost universal.

Absorbing influences from around the world during a fascinating youth that exposed him to travel and internment by his own country, Nakashima discovered the love for his craft in the most unlikely place. Nakashima drew on Japanese designs and practices, which he fused with modern styles to create a body of work that would become synonymous with the best of 20th century American furniture.

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In recent years Nakashima’s furniture has become increasingly collectible, as his legacy that celebrates nature’s imperfections has become progressively popular. “When I’m making something out of a piece of wood, I have a long dialogue with it, sometimes for years,” Nakashima said in a 1979 interview. “I have to find my own relationship with the spirit of a tree, and pretty soon, the wood evolves as a form.”

That level of resourcefulness and devotion to a natural aesthetic helped the creation of his workshop in his hometown of Pennsylvania, but that’s not even half the story of George Nakashima and his influential furniture, as these 10 fascinating facts demonstrate.

1. After graduating Nakashima toured the world to absorb knowledge

After graduating with a Master’s degree in architecture from the University of Washington in 1931, Nakashima sold his car and spent a year in Paris, France where he was introduced to Bauhaus architect Le Corbusier, with whom he shared a moral and spiritual approach to design. From there he travelled to North Africa and then Japan, which further expanded his aesthetic philosophy as he went to work for the Czech-American architect, Antonin Raymond, who had collaborated with Frank Lloyd Wright on the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo. It was this time in Japan that allowed Nakashima to study the subtleties of Japanese architecture and design.

2. He began his journey as a furniture maker in India

Despite Nakashima’s designs drawing on a Japanese aesthetic and Modernist European approach, it was in India where he made his first furniture. The year was 1937 and at the request of Antonin Raymond, Nakashima went to Puducherry as a construction consultant where the American was building an ashram dormitory. Here he not only produced his first furniture, but also became a disciple of the guru Sri Aurobindo and learnt Integral Yoga, which is said to have had a lasting impact on his designs.

3. He honed his furniture skills while imprisoned

Along with the artists Ruth Asawa and Isamu Noguchi, Nakashima was among around 119,000 Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans who were interned by the US during World War II. Nakashima was sent to Camp Minidoka, Idaho in March 1942, but instead of it being a setback for someone born in the country where he was being interned, it proved to be the birth of his future as a furniture pioneer. In Camp Minidoka he met master Japanese carpenter Gentaro Hikogawa who taught Nakashima some traditional Japanese techniques like timber selection and butterfly joints. With limited means, the pair used wood scraps and desert plants to improve their stark living conditions. This association proved pivotal, as it developed Nakashima’s disciplined and patient approach that would inform his later work.

4. Nakashima celebrated nature’s scraps and imperfections

Flaws had beauty in Nakashima’s eyes. What would be discarded by many woodworkers was embraced by Nakashima. In his 1981 book The Soul of a Tree, he wrote: “each flitch, each board, each plank can have only one ideal use. The woodworker, applying a thousand skills, must find that ideal use and then shape the wood to realize its true potential.” This glimpse into the master craftsman’s philosophy and technique is today known as a live edge aesthetic, which he developed in New Hope, where he explored the organic expressiveness of wood and celebrated every knot, burl and figured grain.

5. His love of architecture led to one of his famous chair designs

Not just a furniture maker, Nakashima also designed buildings on his New Hope property, which featured the dramatic, parabolic roofline of a building he called the Conoid Studio. He was particularly enamored with parabolic shapes, which he transferred effortlessly into the creation of his line of famous Conoid furniture, which feature gently curved backs, a cantilevered seat on two legs, and have become an enduring icon of his design.

6. Nakashima’s designs exaggerated his unique approach

Nature was central to everything Nakashima did and he became so synonymous with one particular method that it’s today know as a Nakashima joint. The butterfly joint allowed him to select unusual, asymmetrical pieces of wood and join them together without changing the wood and even enhancing its beauty. Also known as a bow tie, dovetail key, or Dutchman joint, the inlayed wood holds two or more pieces together, but it wasn’t his only signature aesthetic, as he would often sign the name of clients in ink on boards that he specially selected for them.

7. Nakashima preferred to work with a particular wood

While he was known to work with a variety of woods, Nakashima was particularly fond of American timbers, especially the American Black Walnut that naturally occurs in Pennsylvania. He used it often as the deep natural coloring and its natural lustre made it ideally suited to Nakashima’s style of furniture design, allowing the natural beauty of wood’s grain and color to be a central part of any design.

8. Most Nakashima furniture is unique, apart from…

The majority of Nakashima furniture is a one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted labor of love made from his Pennsylvania workshop. However, after making connections with the Knoll furniture company he designed the iconic the Straight Back Chair, which is still in production today after being introduced in 1946. It’s his modernist take on the traditional Windsor chair. Typified by a low-sheen finish that amplifies the wood’s natural grain, the iconic chair epitomizes Nakashima’s sensitivity to nature that is today imitated in many designs and many locations. Keep an eye out for its influence next time you’re in a furniture store or café.

9. Nelson Rockefeller was a super fan who commissioned 200 pieces

“We have taken the essence of the historic Japanese style and brought it up to contemporary form,” explained Nelson Rockefeller of the house he built in Pocantico Hills, New York, in 1973. The Japanese-inspired house was filled floor to ceiling with Nakashima furniture and designs, and has more in common with fine cabinetry making than standard house construction. Rockefeller described it as a place of “great peace and tranquillity, of simplicity and yet of openness,” which was achieved with rare woods from Japan, alongside teak, oak and chestnut that complimented a view of the Hudson. Dive into the house’s simple elegance in this 1978 House Beautiful profile of the building.

10. George Nakashima furniture lives on in his absence

Today, The George Nakashima House, Studio and Workshop is a World Monument from where Nakashima’s daughter, Mira, works alongside fellow woodworkers to produce classic and new designs in her father’s name. The preserved site can be explored in person on guided tours for those who want to fully immerse themselves in the Nakashima way of being.

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Sources: The Guardian | Skandium | Architectural Digest | House Beautiful | The Hudson Co. | Knoll | NakashimaWoodworkers.com