Working Projcet

The dichotomy created by this traditional respect for craft and nature while also consuming and destroying a continually shrinking resource in Japan, the prized Japanese cypress, is perplexing. Without the tradition of the ritualistic dismantling, destroying and recreation of the Grand Shrine of Ise, an ancient skill passed down for many generations from master to apprentice, could be lost. However, with such a fast-shrinking resource and enormous expense one wonders how long this tradition can continue. The 61^st iteration of the shrine is scheduled to begin in 2013.

While doing some research for this post I came across a startling article headline in Bussinessweek

“The End of a 1,400-Year-Old Business: What entrepreneurs starting family businesses can learn from the demise of Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi

“The worlds oldest continuously operating family business ended its impressive run last year. Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi, in operation under the founders descendants since 578, succumbed to excess debt and an unfavorable business climate in 2006.”

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/apr2007/sb20070416_589621.htm

“There is mystery in the creative process and its relation to craft; the infinite moves into dark waters. To find an answer to problems as we see them, to seek solutions and produce objects in space, to fulfill man’s needs with a touch of beauty, to use materials dear to nature, making small answers with useful things- since my earliest experience as a woodworker, all this has been my destiny.”

-George Nakashima, At One With Nature

Following the industrial revolution, the fine line between what was handmade and what was mass-produced became blurred. The craftsman’s connection with material and process became distanced. Technological advances in machinery could be seen as progress, allowing goods to be made quicker and cheaper than ever before, or they could be seen as a breaking our vital link with nature and respect for its resources. To George Nakashima, the latter was true. After World War I, small workshops where failing as factories of mass-production took their place. George Nakashima was careful throughout his career to maintain an intimate relationship with the work being produced in his workshop. He would personally select each individual piece of timber for it’s unique characteristics, and he would be the one who would decide its destiny. For Nakashima, it was the responsibility of the woodworker to honor the soul of the tree, an ancient noble specimen that had given its life in order to live on with dignity not to become some common mass-produced trinket. Following in the footsteps of the fathers of the Arts and Crafts movement, Nakashima saw the role of machines “as an adjunct to handcraftsmanship.”

George Nakashima was born in Spokane Washington in 1905. The son of Japanese immigrants, Nakashima maintained close ties to his cultural beliefs and homeland, which inevitably played a large role in shaping his life philosophy as well as design aesthetic. Trained as an architect, Nakashima received his Masters in Architecture in 1929 from M.I.T. However, his short career as a practicing architect would be overshadowed by his woodworking legacy.

During a period from about 1927- 1940’s Nakashima traveled extensively. During his second visit to Japan, he apprenticed with a Japanese architect that was trained by Frank Lloyd Wright during the construction of the famed Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. This exposure to western style architecture and the philosophies of the Arts and Crafts movement had lasting influence on Nakashima. Another life changing experience was working as a representative of Antonin Raymond’s Architectural firm in Pondicherry, India. His introduction to the teachings of Sri Aurobindo in India had a profound effect on his life’s work.

Once enchanted by metropolitan centers such as Tokyo and Paris, the waste and squallier of industrialized cities eventually led him to reject these cultural centers. “There is no inspiration in our soulless cities, those great forests of steel.”

Recognizing the hostel environment in Japan and China, Nakashima decided to return to the United States just a year before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In 1942 He and his wife were sent to a Japanese internment camp in Hunt, Idaho where he met a nisei, or second generation Japanese-American, woodworker. Much of his knowledge of the nature of wood was gained through this short encounter. Nakashima and his family, now a father of an infant girl, were sponsored for release by Antonin Raymond and were invited to stay on his farm in New Hope, Pennsilvaynia. New Hope became their new home and George established a modest workshop in an open shed on the farm and began his new career as a woodworker.

According to Derek Ostergard’s book, “Full Circle,” one of Nakashima’s most important contributions to American furniture was the “free edge,” which allowed the tree’s natural edge to define a piece’s form. The “free edge” employed by Nakashima should not be confused with the biomorphicism movement connected to the surrealists of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Ostergard writes that the biomorphic design’s “undulant forms and finished edges were solely man-made and had little to do with natural forms or materials.” However this style of manufactured furniture reached commercial success in the 1950’s around the same time Nakashima was himself gaining recognition for his innovations in furniture design.

Another trademark of Nakashima’s design was the bold use of the butterfly joint, sometimes referred to as a bowtie joint. This decorative joint allows for an elegant solution to reinforcing weak and cracked timbers. This design element became necessary in his work because of the imperfect and discarded timbers he chose to work with. Nakashima began this practice of what he called “ragpicking” in opposition to what he saw as the dishonorable treatment of fine lumber. In At One With Nature, he explains that the most desirable wood, selected for its fine grain and lack of “imperfections,” is destined to become strips of thin veneer used to decorate useless objects. His designs favored an elegance captured by the simplicity of lines and “uniqueness” of each timber hand selected for each piece. These cast-offs were no less beautiful to Nakashima; in fact they were the most desirable.

According to Nakashima “My greatest challenge was the creation of the Altar for Peace…” this commission installed in the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, New York in 1989 consisted of two matched book walnut boards measuring 10’ x 10’. This massive solid wood table has a expansion and contraction rate of over I”.