George Nakashima’s lovely 1981 memoir, The Soul of a Tree, is a beautifully produced and photographed book, a spiritual ode to the beauty of wood and the importance of craft, and, in a way, a window into the world of 20th century high-end studio furniture. If you like the live-edge furniture that Nakashima pioneered and his related designs, this book is a treasure trove of photos and info.

Nakashima was born in Spokane, Washington in 1905. He tells of his childhood and teen years exploring the mountains and woods, becoming an Eagle Scout, earning a master’s degree in architecture from MIT, travels and work in New York, Paris, Tokyo, and Pondicherry, India. He also was forced into an internment camp during part of the second World War as were others of Japanese ancestry. These experiences provide the backdrop for what I would call his spiritual reverence for the beauty of wood and craft and his design sensibility as well as the setup of the workshop he established in New Hope, Pennsylvania in the 1940s.

The book has three main parts: the first covers his childhood through the establishment of his workshop in New Hope; the second focuses on trees and wood; and the third describes his process of turning a tree into a beautiful piece of furniture. That last section is chock-full of lovely photos of his work.

While the book isn’t really about how to build furniture, he does drop in a few tidbits of advice for woodworkers, some of which cover highly contested ground. A few examples. He only used plainsawn solid wood. Absolutely no veneer as solid wood is, according to Nakashima, honest and real. (Some period furniture makers and those building in that style might disagree with him.) Wood should always be hand-planed rather than sanded, except for highly figured wood or burls, for which sanding is ok. On the divide between hand tool and machine woodworking, Nakashima says machines are fine if the craft person is controlling the work’s progress. Nakashima also emphasizes the importance of taking the time to let the character of a piece of wood influence the design of what it is to become, especially important in the realm of live-edge furniture.

He decries much modern furniture – dowel joints are out (probably Festool Dominos as well) though Nakashima died in 1990 before Dominos became a thing. In the realm of architecture and housing, he also decries stud walls put together with hammer and nails because there is no real joinery involved in that type of construction. 

I really enjoyed the Nakashima book and would recommend it to anyone interested in his style of furniture or, more generally, 20th century design. That said, the studio furniture stream in which Nakashima worked—that of the sole-proprieter craft person working in a pastoral setting to achieve high design ideals—has come in for criticism. Edward Cooke, Jr, a prof of decorative arts at Yale, wrote an article for Chipstone’s American Furniture that criticized much about the 20th century studio furniture movement, focusing primarily on Sam Maloof, James Krenov, and Wendell Castle (but also Warren Esherick and George Nakashima). Essentially, that that movement was not as authentic as it appears and that “pastoralism and an emphasis on the aura of craftsmanship often mask commercialism.” For what it’s worth, Cooke traces the focus on pastoralism and hand craftsmanship back to the 19th century ideas of William Morris. He also suggests that this Morris-inspired focus has led many in the high-end design world to ignore a lot of very good work that didn’t fit that mold.

There’s a lot there in the Cooke article and, trust me, that whole debate can get very academic very quickly. While that surely isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, you might find it of interest (I did) to spend a little time thinking about where some of our ideas about what constitutes good furniture and good craftsmanship come from.

Nakashima’s book is available on Amazon at this link.

The Cooke article is available on Chipstone’s website at this link.