The June newsletter is out, after I had a bit of an argument with the server! Click the link to find out who won the Twitter giveaway and see what other nonsense I've been accomplishing.
Because I was having technical difficulties, I completely forgot to put something very important in the newsletter: the William Tennent House, in Bucks County, is in serious need of funds. William Tennent was the founder of Log College, the first school in the United States for the training of Presbyterian ministers; he was the teacher of George Whitefield, among many others, and his school was a forerunner to such big-name universities as Princeton. The school has a marker, so it'll be discussed in a future blog post, but the William Tennent House Association is trying to raise money to preserve his home and have it listed on the National Register of Historic Places. You can help! Click here for details.
Speaking of Bucks County, my best friend Andrea and I closed out the month of May with a day trip to scenic New Hope, which is full of history. Neither of us had ever been there. She was a good sport despite the oppressive heat, and we had a great time exploring the Delaware Canal and poking our noses into some of the shops.
Unfortunately, a lot of the attractions in New Hope are only open on the weekends, so it wasn't to our best advantage that we went there on a Tuesday. But we did have a wonderful meal at Martine's Riverhouse Restaurant, where we ate delicious seafood (grilled salmon for me, shrimp po'boy for her) while enjoying a beautiful view of the Delaware River. Shout-out to our server John, who was delightful. After collecting markers and doing a bit of shopping, we wrapped up our visit with some excellent homemade ice cream at Moo Hope Ice Cream, so hello to those guys too. I definitely recommend both places (and the borough as a whole) to travelers who want to get off the beaten path.
Before we left, we ventured just outside of New Hope proper to collect this marker. This is the story of a woodworker whose unique vision helped to usher in the American craft movement.
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| The marker stands just outside the Nakashima woodworking compound at 1847 Aquetong Road, New Hope |
George decided to travel around the world, to see the great buildings and learn more about his craft. He moved to France for a year, where he became friends with the Bauhaus architect Le Corbusier, who shared his idea of architecture as a spiritual activity. From there he went to North Africa, and later to Japan, where he met two people who would be very important for his life and work. One was Antonin Raymond, the American architect who had worked with Frank Lloyd Wright on the Imperial hotel. George went to work for Antonin, traveling around Japan and learning the intricacies of the Japanese style of building and design. In so doing, he met that other important person - Marion Okajima, whom he married.
It was while working for Antonin that George made furniture for the first time. The company was sent to India, to build a dormitory in an ashram, and George was the primary construction consultant. He remained in India until the project was completed in 1939, after which he and his bride returned to Washington state. Their daughter, Mira, was born there in 1942. When she was six months old, however, with World War II raging, the family was sent to Camp Minidoka, a Japanese internment camp in Idaho. During their time there, George befriended a carpenter named Gentaro Hikogawa, who taught him the use of Japanese hand tools and techniques for making furniture; it was also there that George honed his spiritual discipline of craftsmanship.
Antonin didn't forget his friend George, however. He sponsored the family, which enabled them to leave the internment camp in 1943. They relocated to Bucks County, where Antonin had a chicken farm in New Hope and invited George to come and work for him. It was in New Hope, on Aquetong Road, that George established a family compound where he set up his workshop and studio, and there he remained for the rest of his life. Mira, when she was old enough, apprenticed to her father; son Kevin, who joined the family in 1954, was also part of the studio.
Nakashima furniture embraces the natural beauty of wood. George was particular about selecting the pieces with which he'd create his designs, paying attention to the knots and whorls of the wood pattern. His furniture is made up of slabs of wood, polished and made completely smooth on the top, but with the rough edges unfinished - as though taken directly from the tree. Multiple slabs are connected with butterfly joints. An incredible example of a Nakashima dining table can be seen on his page at FindAGrave.com, in the sources below; the Life article also shows many examples of his work, which was done with traditional Japanese hand tools.
George was not a competitive builder. He believed that each day's work was a tribute to the divine, and to that end he simply made art and then sold it to those who found him and commissioned his work. His first big commission came in 1973, when New York's then-governor Nelson Rockefeller commissioned 200 pieces. He began employing other high-quality craftsmen to work in his studio and follow the same principles, including his daughter. His works are found around the world, including in many of the most famous museums.
"The Japanese can start from nothing and create a whole environment," he told Life magazine. "it's just picking up little scraps of this and that, going out into the woods and cutting a little tree and putting it all together. It's the aesthetic of the teahouse, and it creates one of the most lyric environments there is."
Known as "the elder statesman of the American Craft Movement," George was particularly committed to the ideal of world peace. In 1984, he had the chance to buy an immense and particularly fine log of walnut wood, and an idea was born - to create an Altar of Peace on each continent of the world. These would be centers for meditation, prayer, and peace-oriented activities. To that end, he established the Nakashima Foundation for Peace, which is housed in the Minguren Musem (part of the Nakashima compound in New Hope), and thus far four such Altars for Peace have been established. The first was placed in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York in 1986, made from that beautiful walnut. Others have been established in Russia (1992) and India (1996), and as of last year, one is planned for the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre in Cape Town, South Africa.
George passed away in 1990 at the age of 85. Since then, his daughter Mira has been operating the studio, which still produces furniture of his designs as well as her own, and is heavily involved with the Nakashima Foundation as well. Mira's brother Kevin helped with the studio in a bookkeeping capacity, as well as acting as companion and chauffeur to their mother Marion until her death in 2004. Kevin himself died of pneumonia in November 2020; his sister authored a touching tribute page for him on the Nakashima Foundation website.
George Nakashima at FindAGrave.com
George Nakashima at the Historical Marker Database
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
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