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.