George Nakashima was one of the leading innovators of 20th-century furniture design and was the first generation of the American Studio Craft movement. He called himself a woodworker, inspired by ancient craft traditions of Japan, the traditional methods of colonial American craftsmen, the Shakers, and Zen Buddhist ideals of beauty.
Born in Spokane, Washington, he earned a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Washington in 1929 and his Master of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1931. Nakashima worked as a mural painter on Long Island and in Albany before travelling to explore architectural styles and cultures in Paris, France. After this, he travelled to Japan to explore his family’s heritage and took a position in Tokyo with Antonin Raymond, an American architect who had collaborated with Frank Lloyd Wright on the Imperial Hotel. He also spent time studying Japanese architecture and design.
Nakashima built furniture for the first time when he was the primary construction consultant at an ashram in Puducherry, India. Later, he returned to Japan where he married his wife, Marion Okajima. They moved to the United States in 1940 and settled in Seattle where he had a furniture workshop until World War II, when they were interned in Camp Minidoka, Idaho. While there, he met traditional Japanese cabinet maker Gentauro Hikogawa, and learned to use Japanese hand tools and joinery techniques from him. The family was released in 1943, through the sponsorship of Antonin Raymond, and they settled in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where he reopened his furniture workshop and studio. Over time it grew from just George to a successful business employing many craftsmen.
His original source of wood was scraps, wood from tree surgeons, construction projects, and fallen trees. While in Japan he had learned how wood was cut, evaluated, and chosen. He allowed the wood to speak for itself and utilized flaws like knots, cracks, cavities, and wormholes. He had a spiritual connection to the trees he used, and he believed he was giving a second life to the trees. A quote from 1977 stated “my relationship to furniture and construction is basically my dialogue with a tree, with a complete and psychic empathy.”
He collaborated with Knoll from 1945-1954 and Widdicomb-Mueller from 1957-1961, and while he preferred handcrafted studio items, those partnerships exposed his designs to a broader audience. During this time, he received early recognition for his work in 1951, when his work was featured by the Museum of Modern Art, and he was awarded a gold medal in craftsmanship by the American Institute of Architects in 1952. With these accolades, he received many large commissions including 200 pieces for Nelson Rockefeller’s house in Pocantico Hills, NY, Columbia University, Carnegie Melon University, Kyoto’s Church of Christ the King, and over one hundred pieces for Dr. Arthur and Evelyn Krosnick of Princeton, New Jersey.
Nakashima’s work was not normally signed, as in the mingei tradition, until in 1980, due to the rising number of fakes, he started signing and dating his work in Indian ink and then felt pen.
In 1984, Nakashima founded the Nakashima Foundation for Peace in New Hope, Pennsylvania. He dreamed then that if Altars for Peace made for each continent of the world as centers for meditation, prayer, and activities for peace, the world would be a better place. The Nakashima studio continues today under the guidance of his daughter, Mira Nakashima, an accomplished architect and woodworker who has worked at the studio since 1970. They continue to produce George’s designs as well as Mira’s.
