By Lee Williams
Since our introduction to design as more than just a hobby, we've been looking up those who came before us to help us to form a collective company identity. One of the major forces of the American Design Industry during the 20th Century was George Nakashima, The Samurai of modern minimalism and woodworking applications. Here, we tell you what we have learned about the creator and frontrunner of one of our most important, desired, and lucrative product offerings: Live edge.
In the beginning of creating our makerspace and developing the ideas that became our company, we were tasked with pinpointing a collective identity. We started by asking ourselves some open-ended questions: What do we want to be, and how do we want to be seen in our industry? Where do we want to start? Who do we need to align with? Are there any companies that have done what we want to do? What example can we take from their experience and their story? Just like children sidetracked by peer pressure during the formative years of creating a personal identity, our company in its formation was sensitive to its environment. This was a volatile climate for us as we became entrenched in business; a climate dictated to by a whirlwind of requests from clients, crafting based on our personal economic need, and being dictated to completely by the entire market instead of finding our niche for our own high performance to meet with consistency and create opportunity. We were drowning in doing what we could, and rarely did we get a chance to revisit the surface to breathe and figure out what we wanted to become. Whether the reason was branding, design, or honing in on our own focus, it was important that we created a company personality profile- and fast.
In this stage, I got to work and began to research everything that I could about one of our most lucrative and sought after services- live edge surfaces, especially river tables with epoxy. I had figured out that we should base our original identity on the item or service we offer that excited our client base the most, was most requested, and (last but far from least) was the most lucrative for the company's growth. This led me to start with woodworking, and live edge specifically, since so much attention had been directed to accommodating this type of client that this seemed to be what we were already most prepared to do consistently.
Mind you, prior to my more extensive research period, our design preferences were already leaning in the direction of simplistic luxury with a hint of farmhouse/natural beauty to show the effortlessness of our cooperation with surrounding environments. We set out originally to bring more modernity to rural design, and blend more rural capabilities and homestead applications in urban environments-which has remained our goal to this day. In the spirit of consistency, Sovereign Customs by Design has an individual and very nuanced approach to design, within which there are some factors that are of ultimate importance. A few of the most prevalent of these factors are Minimalism, Natural Elements, Modernity, Efficiency, and Sustainability. During the company's inception, as I researched what was becoming our shared philosophy and what we bring to the market, I almost immediately noticed a name that continued to come up in my research: George Nakashima.
One of the first facts that became immediately obvious to me as I began to become a fan and mentee of the historic designer was the impact of Japanese culture and architectural ideals on Nakashima's iconic style, and how his ideas are infused into our own 21st Century "less-is-more" mentality about modern style.
So, what was so special about George Nakashima? How did his name become synonymous with some of the most dynamic styles and applications woodworking has ever known? What is the link between Sovereign Customs, Nakashima and his surviving company, Japanese Design, Asian Culture, Minimalism, and Natural Elements? Let's take a deep dive into the 20th Century design landscape of architecture and woodworking that created one of the most artistic and iconic American Design movements and companies ever known to mankind, and raised George Nakashima above and beyond his time as the father of live edge.
According to Wikipedia, George Katsutoshi Nakashima (Japanese: 中島勝寿Nakashima Katsutoshi, May 24, 1905 – June 15, 1990) was an American master woodworker, M.I.T.-trained architect, and furniture maker who was one of the leading innovators of 20th century furniture design, the leading light of the American Studio furniture movement, and a father of the American craft movement.
Along with Wharton Esherick, Sam Maloof and Wendell Castle, Nakashima was an artisan who disdained industrial methods and materials in favor of a personal, craft-based approach to the design. What sets Nakashima apart is the poetic style of his work, his reverence for wood and the belief that his furniture could evince — as he put it in the title of his 1981 memoir — The Soul of a Tree.
Having been a spoken word poetry artist, visual artist, and musician prior to my venturing into interior design and making as a career, I understood the poetry of Nakashima's work more than most. My previous understanding of Shinto, the primary religion of Japan for centuries, helps me to comprehend on a deeper level the idea of an "inanimate" object like a tree possessing a soul. To the Japanese, all things have a soul, and working with material from an object is a way to free the expression of the soul of the object, with respect of the desire the object had anyway.
But trees are not just objects, are they? They're alive. And if I were a tree, I'd want to be live edge when I die. Simply put, what I connect to about Nakashima's work is his ability to free the ideas of the tree, allowing it to be what it would be anyway. The freedom of his work, and the natural applications may have to do with his origins in the Pacific Northwest, a region where the fundamentals for these design styles were either imported from the Far East or popularized out of necessity.
Born in Spokane, Washington, to Japanese immigrants, 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. But Nakashima's parents were not just ordinary immigrants. They both claimed Samurai ancestry. So Nakashima's lineage was one that passed to him a highly attuned inward perspective on the world, a simplistic approach to life, and an innate proclivity to work with nature, and not against it. It seems to me that as a result of his retention of so much of his prestigious culture, Nakashima would allow his previous experiences to culminate and climax within his work to serve as the preceding ideology for our American domestic idea of modern farmhouse. From a first glance at his earlier works, it seems like he was the father of the style, but he created with a lot more foreign influence. I blame this on his travels, constantly adding to the natural well-roundedness of his genius.
The 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. In this way, Nakashima was like the Samurai that he descended from, and the Yogi and Gurus of India, and all other highly specialized spiritual leaders: He got his wisdom from oral tradition, passed down for centuries. This is what gives his philosophy such depth. To quote the Nakashima Company on his mentality: "George's approach was that of an integral Yogi: Not only did he believe that the inherent beauty of natural materials like wood should be studied, understood, and respected, but that the product should retain such materials' marks of individuality, as well as those of the craftsperson who brings it into being."
I connect to this ideal. As the descendant of African slaves, I learned my skill from my father, who was a general contractor. He learned from his father, who was a stonemason. And he learned from his father, who was originally from India, and worked in New Orleans in the Construction Industry. And at each level, I'm pretty sure that the father, speaking to his son, would tell the children that would become my forefathers what my father told me: "Put your all into your work." In a world where very little is thought to be passed down from father to son, its very difficult to feel the magnitude of that statement. But in no other career other than one in a makers industry are these words more meaningful. You can put so much of yourself into the things you create, that those very items begin to retain all the marks of your individuality that matter the most: your connection with your childhood, your family, and your life's journey live through your craft.
It stands to reason that these traditions survive and make new ways to communicate to every generation about the survival of our species, and the resilience of the human spirit. And as Nakashima learned this freedom in a state of political bondage, so did my ancestors learn within a time of affliction how to use a craft to change their outlook on the world. And centuries later, I am the result. Like live edge from a fallen log, Nakashima has earned my respect as an American source of innovation, and an example of how strong people make the best of circumstances that begin as the most difficult challenge.
A former employer won Nakashima’s release from the Japanese Internment Camp and brought him to bucolic New Hope, Pennsylvania, where Nakashima set up a studio and worked for the rest of his life. Pennsylvania, being one of the first thirteen colonies, and thought of in conjunction with Amish culture and American Independence, probably helped to pick up where Spokane left off, in giving Nakashima the American experience to bring his traditional Japanese upbringing full circle. You can see each of the regions from his journey in his work through its simplistic, natural design.
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. This is the "freeing of the soul" I previously mentioned. Each burl, Each warp, Each age line, speaks of the Earth, a time period, an occurrence. It's like when we talk about our deceased loved ones after they're gone... We weave stories from memories of their lives. A live edge piece is a movie, a capturing and encapsulating of time in creativity.
To make this so-called "movie" was an art within itself. Nakashima left the “free edge,” or natural contour, of the slab un-planed, 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.
Nelson Rockefeller in 1973 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 Steven Spielberg, Brad Pitt, Diane von Furstenberg and the late Steve Jobs (the Steve Jobs connection makes me wonder if Nakashima has to do with the sleek minimalistic design of Apple products, as well as the way they are packaged and presented). In 1983, he accepted the Order of the Sacred Treasure, an honor bestowed by the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese government.
To connect Nakashima with Sovereign, and show you how special he is to us is not a difficult task. From our morning routine of meditation and study, my top-knot (I've had clients mistake it for a "man-bun" to which I vehemently respond with the accurate terminology), and my inspiration to build Sovereign on monk-like principles, to the earth-conscious philosophy and Yogic approach to the craft, Sovereign ideals reflect Nakashima's principles almost exactly. We consider our makerspace a dojo of sorts, and we don't disrespect it with negative mentalities or conversations. We attach more to the people we work for than the objects we make. We may not be descended from Samurai, but we are certainly noble, and royal in our own right, as we continue following the example Nakashima and his existing company has left, and keeping the romanticism, purity, simplicity, artistry, and genius of minimalism and natural applications alive and well across the southeast seaboard, and eventually all of the continental US.
There is so much more to unpack about George Nakashima. I read in a book by Robert Greene that you can choose mentors, and that sometimes if you have enough of their work at your disposal, they don't even have to be alive to mentor you. In this way, I believe that George Nakashima has become one of my most admired mentors, one that I share a deep personal chemistry with and that I appreciate as a part of history, and a part of my samurai journey toward the sovereign way.
I plan to do a Nakashima Part 2, but until I do, I'll leave you with some quotes from the current company website, and his book, The Soul of a Tree.
"George Nakashima began his furniture business as a reactionary movement against the practices of 20th Century "Modern" Architecture, Design, and Art. Through his work, he called for a reclamation of the philosophy of earlier historical periods, in which the human eye and hand determined an individual's world and relationship to the universe, not the [identity of the] universe itself."
"With a solid background in architectural history and design, engineering and building practice, George turned towards a simpler life, in which direct contact with materials, tools, clients, and craftsmen was more important than the imposed egoism of the modern design world."
"In his book, The Soul of a Tree, George described his philosophy in which wood is not regarded as an inanimate object, but rather as a material which 'lives and breathes.' Through the woodworkers hands, wood takes on a life of its own. We continue to observe this philosophy when crafting the Nakashima furniture we produce today."
"We meditate with a board, sometimes for years. We search for the essence, to share its joys and tragedies. A thousand skills and experiences spring into action. We are making something!"
"I poke my way through the valley of fallen giants, finding here and there fragments which will be given a second life."
Mastodon: The Sovereign Way is a subsidiary content provider of Sovereign Customs by Design, INC. We post new blogs twice a week about our Makerspace, creating custom pieces, Sovereignty, Self-sufficiency, off-grid living, Hunting, Guns, Motors, and Martial Arts. Visit us at sovereigncustoms.com
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