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| George Nakashima |
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| George Nakashima |
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| George Nakashima |
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| George Nakashima |
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| George Nakashima |
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| George Nakashima |
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| George Nakashima |
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| George Nakashima |
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| George Nakashima |
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| George Nakashima |
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| George Nakashima |
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| George Nakashima |
Born in Spokane, Washington, to Japanese immigrants, George Nakashima traveled widely after college, working and studying in Paris, Japan, and India, and at every stop he absorbed both Modernist and traditional design influences.
A turning point in Nakashima’s career development came in the United States in 1942, when he was placed in an internment camp for Asian-Americans in Idaho. There, Nakashima met a master woodcarver who tutored him in Japanese crafting techniques.
A former employer won Nakashima’s release and brought him to bucolic New Hope, Pennsylvania, where Nakashima set up a studio and worked for the rest of his life.
Nakashima’s singular aesthetic is best captured in his custom-made tables and benches -- pieces that show off the grain, burls and whorls in a plank of wood. He left the “free edge,” or natural contour, of the slab unplaned, and reinforced fissures in the wood with “butterfly” joints. Almost all Nakashima seating pieces have smooth, milled edges.
Nakashima also contracted with large-scale manufacturers to produce carefully supervised editions of his designs. Knoll has offered his “Straight Chair” -- a modern take on the spindle-backed Windsor chair -- since 1946. The now-defunct firm Widdicomb-Mueller issued the Shaker-inspired “Origins” collection in the 1950s.
In 1973 Nelson Rockefeller gave Nakashima his single largest commission -- a 200-piece suite for his suburban New York estate.
Today, Nakashima furniture is collected by both the staid and the fashionable -- his work sits in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution, as well as in the homes of Stephen Spielberg, Brad Pitt, Diane von Furstenberg, and the late Steve Jobs.
