George
Nakashima
(1905-1990)
architect - designer
George Nakashima was born in Spokane,
Washington and started out as a student of
Forestry and Architecture at the University
of Washington in the 1920s. He made architecture
his main focus, studying at the École
Américaine des Beaux Arts outside of
Paris, and graduating from M.I.T. with an
MA in Architecture in 1930.
On his own, however,
he devoted his time to learning from traditional
woodworkers in India and Japan and, while
at an internment camp with his family during
the Second World War, he was trained on salvaged wood by a
master Japanese carpenter. He found an immense
well of inspiration in unfinished natural
wood, writing that, "in dealing with
solid wood almost each piece becomes a personal
problem and the nature of each slab is used
to its fullest capacity." The furniture
and installations that Nakashima designed
hearken back to early American furniture in
their economy of means and their respect for
the unique qualities of each wood.
Nakashima started out in 1931 as an architectural
designer for the Long Island State Parks and
the New York Government. In 1933 he moved
to Japan and then India, working for the architectural
offices of Antonin Raymond. He designed an
ashram in India and was given the Sanskrit
name, Sundarananda, meaning "one who
delights in beauty," an incarnation that
informed both his work and his working philosophy.
Back in America in 1940 he started
a furniture workshop in Seattle and began
receiving commissions to design interiors.
The pieces he made for the apartment of André
Ligné in 1941, work inspired by the
simplicity and methods of Shaker furniture,
established his professional aesthetic and
were forms that he revisited. Some of these
pieces, along with his writing, began appearing
in Arts & Architecture, making his name
known in the West Coast design community.
In 1943 Raymond, now living in New Hope, Pennsylvania
sponsored the Nakashima family's release from
the internment camp and they moved there and
established a studio.
Nakashima designed a series of furniture for
Knoll in 1946, although he maintained the
production rights, selling the same pieces
from his own shop. His tables, like the "Slab
Coffee Table," were unique in that they
often left the natural edge of the wood as
part of the finished piece.
His style can be seen as an extension of the
Arts and Crafts movement in the way it valued
craftsmanship that Nakashima believed was
"not only a creative force, but a moral
idea." During this period he also produced
the "Settee, No Arms," and the "Mira"
series of chairs. His chairs, while they sometimes
revealed the natural knots in the wood, often
had a more 'finished' quality than his tables,
in that he worked the wood into a more specific
shape.
In 1957 the company Widdicomb-Mueller
released his classical "Origins"
line of furniture, which was followed by his
"Conoid" series of furniture, frames
and room dividers. In 1973 he received his
largest single commission, to create over
200 pieces for Governor Rockefeller's home
in Tarrytown, New York. The estate, designed
by a Japanese architect from Nakashima's Raymond
days, called for elegant but durable pieces
with an eastern sensibility. This series was
called "Greenrock," the name of
the estate. In 1983 he designed the massive
"Altar of Peace" installed in the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York
City.
related
subjects:
links:
www.nakashimafoundation.org
