He Made Trees Live Again
George
Nakashima always insisted that he was a simple woodworker,
not an artist. Even though major museums exhibited his work
and the director of the American Craft Museum called him
a national treasure, Mr. Nakashima rejected the label of
artist. For almost fifty years he simply went on shaping
wood into beautiful chairs, tables, and cabinets.
Nakashima hadn’t set out to become a furniture maker. Trained as an architect, he traveled as a young man to India to supervise the building of part of an ashram, or Hindu monastery. The spiritual influence of the ashram led him to rethink his life.
Nakashima had been fascinated by wood since he wandered as a boy among the huge trees of the Ho River Valley in Washington State. Now, unsatisfied by architecture, Nakashima decided to pursue woodworking as his vocation.
Soon after Nakashima returned to the United States, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Like other Americans of Japanese descent, Nakashima, his wife, and their baby daughter, Mira, were forced into an internment camp. Allowed to take only what they could carry, the family was transported from their comfortable home to a camp in Hunt, Idaho. Once there, they were guarded day and night, isolated from contact with the outside world. It was here, at the Minidoka Relocation Center, that Nakashima met an expert Japanese carpenter who taught him traditional woodworking skills and encouraged him to become a furniture maker.
After their release, the family came to the small town of New Hope, Pennsylvania. Nakashima acquired a plot of wooded land outside town. With the help of family and friends, he cut down trees and moved rocks so he could put up a house and workshop.
At first, life was difficult. The family lived in a tent while building the house. They had little money. But Nakashima was determined to create a life that would allow him to live close to the land, integrating work and family.
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One
of Nakashima’s earliest pieces, made around 1944.
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Nakashima had a clear goal. He intended each piece of furniture he made to be as perfect as possible. Even making a box was an act of creation, Nakashima said, because it produced an object that had never existed before. But crafting furniture was far more difficult than making a box.
First, proper wood had to be found. Initially Nakashima used local wood, sometimes from his own property. Later, he traveled to seek out English oak, Persian walnut, African zebra wood, and Indian teak. He especially liked to find giant roots that had been dug out of the ground after a tree was taken down. Nakashima felt that making this wood into furniture was a way of allowing the tree to live again.
Nakashima cut the wood into boards, then stacked the boards in his workshop. For months, even years, he studied the grain and contours of each board, writing notes on the wood in chalk. Nakashima believed each plank had an ideal use. When the woodworker found it, he could create an object that was both useful and beautiful.
Most furniture makers prefer perfect boards. Nakashima took pleasure in using wood with interesting knots and cracks. These irregularities gave the wood personality and showed that the tree had lived a happy life, he said. He used only solid boards, never veneers, and often designed tabletops with the edges left unfinished, showing the natural surface of the wood just beneath the bark. His furniture was finished with oil because Nakashima disliked hard finishes that hid the natural grain of the wood.
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Low
and high versions of the three-legged Mira chair.
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One early piece Nakashima designed was a three-legged chair for his small daughter, Mira, to use when she sat at the table for meals. The Mira chair became so popular that Nakashima later made both low and high versions. Another famous piece, the Conoid chair, has two legs supported by bladelike feet. Always, Nakashima’s designs were precise and graceful, marked by a simplicity that revealed his love for the wood.
As the years passed, Nakashima’s reputation grew, and his work received many awards. His children, Mira and Kevin, now adults, joined the team of craftspeople in their father’s studio. Nakashima’s dream of integrating work and family had come true.
Nakashima believed that trees, rooted in earth and reaching skyward, remind us that we should live in harmony with each other and the natural world. In 1984 he had another dream, of a peace altar made of wood. Determined to make the dream a reality, Nakashima bought a rare and expensive log from a 300-year-old black walnut tree.
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This
coffee table with
unfinished edges illustrates Nakashima’s unique style. |
Cutting a log into boards is like cutting a diamond. If the log isn’t cut properly, the wood can be ruined. To cut this unusual log, Nakashima hired a specially trained woodcutter to come from California.
On a snowy January day, Nakashima watched anxiously as the woodcutter started to work. Shortly after the first cut began, the saw screeched against metal. Something was buried inside the tree. Would it make the wood useless?
Nakashima waited tensely until the cut was completed and the three-inch layer lifted off. Inside was a small piece of pipe, easily removed. Nakashima touched the richly marbled grain. “It is more beautiful than I ever imagined,” he said softly.
After drying for two years, the wood had to be shaped and polished. On New Year’s Eve, 1986, Nakashima’s altar for peace was installed in the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The famous music conductor Leonard Bernstein led a concert to celebrate.
The man who called himself a woodworker continued to win acclaim. Shortly before his death in 1990, the American Craft Museum in New York City celebrated Nakashima’s work in a major retrospective. But a writer for The New York Times may have summed up Nakashima’s accomplishments best when she said George Nakashima created “a song of joy in wood.”
