George nakashima furniture
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‘To be intimate with nature in its multifaceted moods is one of the greatest experiences of life.’
George Nakashima was born in Spokane, Washington in 1905 and grew up in the forests of the Olympic Peninsula. In 1930 he obtained a bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Washington and a master's from MIT.
After spending some time in Paris, George Nakashima travelled the world and spent five years in Japan. He worked at the Antonin Raymond architectural office in Tokyo, which sent him to Pondicherry, India, where he was the on-site architect for the first reinforced concrete building in that country.
When war broke out, Nakashima returned to the US with his wife-to-be, Marion, whom he had met in Tokyo. In 1942 the couple and their daughter Mira were interned in Minidoka, Idaho which the American government had opened to hold Japanese Americans. There he met a Japanese carpenter who had trained in Japan and became his apprentice, learning traditional Japanese woodworking skills.
In 1943 Nakashima was allowed to move to P
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George Nakashima
American architect (1905–1990)
George Katsutoshi Nakashima (Japanese: 中島勝寿Nakashima Katsutoshi, May 24, 1905 – June 15, 1990) was an American woodworker, architect, and furniture maker who was one of the leading innovators of 20th century furniture design and a father of the American craft movement[citation needed]. In 1983, he accepted the Order of the Sacred Treasure, an honor bestowed by the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese government.[1]
Early life
Nakashima was born in 1905 in Spokane, Washington, to Katsuharu and Suzu Nakashima. He enrolled in the University of Washington program in architecture, graduating with a Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch) in 1929. In 1931, after earning a master's degree in architecture from M.I.T.,[2] Nakashima sold his car and purchased a round-the-world tramp steamship ticket. He spent a year in France working odd jobs to fund an artist's lifestyle. In Paris he was introduced to architect Le Corbusier, the two bonding over their views on the architect’s moral obligation to societ
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GEORGE NAKASHIMA
He wasn’t alone in his disdain. Although not a fan of being identified with a particular group or style, Nakashima is nonetheless considered a major figure in the American studio craft movement, where craftspeople, not machines, controlled all aspects of production from conception to creation. They championed utilitarian objects made by their own hands and considered natural materials, like fiber, wood, and clay, worthy of veneration. So did their wealthy clients, who paid handsomely for bespoke pieces. This is a familiar trajectory for utopian reactionary movements which, in their rejection of the status-quo, eventually become regarded as elitist.
In 1946, as modernist architects were building temples of glass and steel, Nakashima began his humble homesteading experiment by building a single room with mostly salvaged materials, after a year spent living in a tent. Inside this main room, slabs of walnut flooring and a dropped-ceiling of chestnut-colored persimmon planks, fastened with wooden pegs, give the impression of being inside of a boat. A well-used Fra
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