TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/062689/06268900.072

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 5KB | 88 lines

DESIGN, Page 75

Something Of a Druid

George Nakashima gives old trees masterly new life

By J.D. Reed


    Just days after their Princeton, N.J., house burned down,
physician Arthur Krosnick and his wife Evelyn visited their friend
George Nakashima. Over three decades, the Krosnicks had collected
114 pieces of furniture created by Nakashima, who lives in Bucks
County, Pa. Now they asked the 84-year-old craftsman if he could
re-create the collection, nearly all of which was lost in the fire.
Any other octogenarian might have hesitated, but not Nakashima.
With the same kind of powerful understatement that characterizes
his furniture, he agreed, remarking, "You've been loyal, and I'd
like to help."

    For nearly half a century, Nakashima has been producing unique
furniture for loyal clients. In the process, he has also built a
distinguished reputation. Fellow furniture maker Sam Maloof calls
him the "elder statesman" of the postwar American crafts movement;
Anne d'Harnoncourt, director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
proclaims him "a national treasure." To further polish his renown,
a warm and witty retrospective show of his work is now on view at
the American Crafts Museum in New York City. "Full Circle" presents
43 of Nakashima's best pieces, from a battered 1944 teak coffee
table to a masterly 1983 music stand whose top is a chunk of maple
burl, complete with holes and fissures.

    Nakashima appreciates the attention, but accolades run against
his self-effacing grain. Trained as an architect at M.I.T., he took
up furniture making after studying with spiritual leader Sri
Aurobindo in Pondicherry, India, during the 1930s. "The negation
of the ego," says Nakashima, "is central in Indian philosophy. If
you can negate your ego, you can develop." During World War II,
Nakashima advanced his craft in an Idaho detention camp for
Japanese Americans. There he learned about prejudice. He also
learned woodworking from a fellow internee who had been trained as
a carpenter in Japan.

    Nakashima's bench mark is the wood itself: form follows grain.
He has gathered an extensive collection of lumber that includes
slabs of Carpathian elm, Oregon myrtle and French olive ash.
Nakashima says, "I'm something of a Druid," and he sallies into the
woods to check promising trees himself. "I use logs that would be
almost useless to commercial furniture makers, with their concern
for regular grain and thin veneers," he adds. "If a tree has had
a joyful life it produces a beautiful grain. Other trees have lived
unhappily -- bad weather or a terrible location. We use both
kinds."

    No matter the wood's emotional state, Nakashima's furniture is
distinguished by a tension between naturally shaped slabs of wood
and meticulously worked support elements. While the base of a
dining table may be crisply machined, Nakashima lets the natural
"free edge" of the top planks determine the contour of the piece,
instead of sawing a geometrical line.

    A number of influences glow in Nakashima's work. His admiration
for New England rustic is evident in slab coffee tables that are
halved cherry and walnut logs. He interprets Shaker design in a
10-ft.-long bench made from a single plank of black walnut set with
a spidery backrest of hickory spindles. But his genius is
essentially Oriental, akin to that of Zen rock gardening and
Oriental flower arranging. Nakashima selects the exact natural
object needed to serve a particular purpose. For a recent table,
he used an 8-ft. cross section of redwood root. The wild energy of
the wood, complete with cracks and holes, strains outward, as if
it were trying to dissolve back into the ground. But the wood is
held together in places with 4-in.-wide butterfly-shaped splints
of walnut, Nakashima's signature method of prompting the ancient
to new service.

    There is nothing precious in either Nakashima's designs or his
workshop. He employs ten assistant craftsmen and uses some power
tools to do the rough work. The oil finish of his furniture merely
needs to be cleaned with a wet cloth. "We recommend hard use," says
Nakashima. "A wood surface that is without a scratch or mar is kind
of distressing. It shows no life and has no time value." His
business approach is equally straightforward. "I wanted," he says,
"to make furniture out of real wood without it costing that much
more than you would pay in a good store." He sells only directly
to customers. Prices for stock items range from $155 for a plank
stool to $4,000 for a wall case.

    With his concern for traditional workmanship and his devotion
to organic simplicity, Nakashima tends to be disdainful of many of
the latest generation of craftspeople. "They're trying to be
Picassos," he says. "They've got all the ego and glitz and high
gloss of modern art. But crafts don't need that. They can stand up
by themselves."