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Today, AD steps inside the Japanese-style home and woodworking studios of legendary furniture designer George Nakashima in New Hope, Pennsylvania. Mira Nakashima shares the story behind her father’s iconic designs, from the Conoid chair to handcrafted live-edge tables. Explore the historic compound, innovative architecture, and serene natural setting that shaped Nakashima’s philosophy of honoring wood and traditional craftsmanship. Discover how Japanese techniques and American modernism come together in one of the most influential woodworking studios in the world and create a Japanese oasis in the heart of Pennsylvania.
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00:15I'm Mira Nakashima, daughter of George Nakashima, and we are at the Nakashima Studios.
00:20We're going to take you on a trip around the property in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
00:27My father, George, was the first of four children.
00:30He was born in 1905 in Spokane, Washington.
00:35He loved Boy Scouts and developed a very strong love of trees at that point.
00:40So he decided to major in forestry at University of Washington and then realized that his employment
00:46opportunities were somewhat limited in that profession and switched to architecture.
00:51And then he got a scholarship to MIT and graduated in 1930, at the height of the Depression.
00:57So he had trouble getting a job, and at one point he decided the best thing to do would
01:03be to sell his car and buy a steamship ticket around the world with that money.
01:08He was bummed around Paris for a while.
01:11There were two buildings which really fascinated him.
01:14One was the Charter Cathedral.
01:16Every inch of that cathedral, it was built by people of all different walks of life who
01:22just worked together to build this cathedral.
01:25Another building was a Corbusier building.
01:28The Pavillon Suisse was under construction when he was in Paris, and he was fascinated with
01:33reinforced concrete architecture.
01:44This is the Konoid Studio.
01:46Konoid basically means it's generated from a section of a cone.
01:50My dad was really into thin warped shell roofs, and this is the most experimental warped shell
01:56on the property.
01:58It's made of reinforced concrete, and it's a 40 by 40 foot span.
02:02It's round at that end, and it's basically flat at the other end, and the engineers added
02:07the sign curves so he could keep it two and a half inches thick.
02:11When he started working on it, he was so inspired by the space, he set up his studio here.
02:18So this space spawned a line of furniture.
02:21You have the Konoid chair, which has become kind of synonymous with our brand.
02:24It is a two-legged cantilevered chair, and when it came out, we received a number of
02:28letters saying, hey, you can't sell a two-legged wooden chair, you're going to get sued up
02:32and down the street.
02:33A two-legged chair is going to break all the time.
02:34It doesn't break.
02:35It's one of our strongest chairs.
02:36I love it dearly.
02:37We also have the Konoid dining table.
02:39This one's made with English walnut.
02:41We have the Konoid coffee table.
02:42We have the Konoid room divider, which is right here.
02:44This one's made with Persian walnut.
02:45Really lovely.
02:46Konoid end table here.
02:48Lots of Konoid named pieces.
02:50Nothing's cone-shaped, though.
02:52The little chair in the front right there with three legs was the first original mirror
02:59chair.
02:59It was designed for me when I was about 10, that's in the early 1950s.
03:09He said he had this feeling of death in the Paris society.
03:14And he decided it was time to get back on that boat, and that ended up in Japan.
03:19It was 1934, so he got a job with the office of Raymond Antonin in Tokyo.
03:25He brought modern architecture to Japan.
03:28And there were many people in his office who became wonderful modernist architects in Japan.
03:35And Dad was exposed to them.
03:38They hadn't done any reinforced concrete of any kind in the continent of India at the time.
03:43So Dad volunteered to go and be architect on site.
03:46He went there in 1936.
03:48He had to train people to do reinforced concrete, so he became very involved in the society and
03:54the philosophy and took on the name of Sundar Ananda.
03:59He thought he was going to stay there for the rest of his life.
04:01But World War II was starting, Dad had second thoughts.
04:07He said, well, if my family is all back in the USA, I better go back to the USA.
04:11On the way, he met my mother.
04:13They fell in love, became engaged, and were married in Los Angeles in 1941.
04:18And then they moved up to Seattle, Washington.
04:22On the way, Dad did a survey trip of architecture in the USA, and he decided he didn't want to
04:28be an architect anymore if that's the way they were doing architecture in the USA.
04:32So he turned to furniture.
04:34A year after my parents were married, I was born.
04:38And then six weeks after that, we were all incarcerated on the Idaho desert.
04:44That was my first home, which I don't remember, luckily.
04:48Our family decided if we were going to be incarcerated, we would all be together.
04:52So my grandparents and my aunts and uncles, and we were all together in the same camp.
04:58One good thing that he did learn when we were in camp, the Japanese carpenter he worked with
05:03basically instructed him in how to improvise with found objects, because that's all we had.
05:08We had leftover packing materials.
05:10There were leftover building materials.
05:12There was bitter brush that grew on the desert.
05:15He also learned how to use Japanese hand tools and certain kinds of joinery that he wasn't
05:20that familiar with.
05:21He was so grateful to this man named Gentaro Hikagawa, because he was a master carpenter.
05:26There was no furniture except the army cots.
05:30So Dad and Gentaro learned how to improvise and make furniture for our camp space.
05:36My mother was not so happy with the situation, but Dad, he knew how to make the best of whatever
05:41was given you.
05:42Dad's professor from MIT contacted Antonin Noemi Raymond, who had left Japan and came back
05:50to Pennsylvania, to the East Coast, and had bought an old farm in Bucks County.
05:56And Dad's professor contacted them and said, can you please sponsor the Nakashimas so they
06:00can leave camp?
06:01And they did.
06:02And so they insisted they really needed a chicken farmer.
06:06So my dad came and he was a chicken farmer in Pennsylvania.
06:10After a while, he said chickens and he were not psychologically compatible.
06:14There were some letters that we discovered in the family house that my mother had written.
06:20And she described the time when we were at the Raymond farm, just down the hill here.
06:25There's a stream that runs by the farm.
06:27And she said we were playing in the fresh water and we were free.
06:31She was just so grateful to be free and out of that camp.
06:35Even though we were chicken farmers, we were at least free.
06:40When we were released from camp early, during that period of time, because of Mr. Raymond's
06:47connections with the architecture and art world, Dad met Isamu Noguchi and Harry Bertoia.
06:53Harry was a sculptor and he also designed chairs for Knoll.
06:57So when Dad built this building, Harry was very kind and gifted Dad a sculpture.
07:02So one of the sculptures is hanging on the wall over there.
07:05The other one's outside on the patio.
07:07We've also used Akari lamps, which were designed by Isamu Noguchi.
07:12He was basically doing the same kind of thing as my father.
07:16And he did his part to try to preserve the old Japanese craft traditions after World War II.
07:22I think this is one of the biggest ones that Noguchi designed.
07:26But Dad always had one hanging here.
07:29And this is our design studio.
07:30This is where we work.
07:31That's my desk right there.
07:33This is my desk and my chair.
07:35It used to be Dad's.
07:36We use old-fashioned drafting tools.
07:38Yeah.
07:39Of course we have modernized and used computers.
07:41When we still do our drawing by hand, I really feel it's important to be able to use real
07:46paper and pencils to draw because it sort of translates into the handwork in the shop.
07:58When Dad started out, I think everybody was geared towards mass production.
08:02But he was of the mind where he thought we should preserve handwork and making things by hand.
08:10And just the whole experience of people's hands on natural materials and using not just machines, which we use partly,
08:19but hand tools as well.
08:21He insisted that that that was an important part of design.
08:31They're going to make this for the Wayne Arts Center.
08:33Yeah.
08:35Should be nice.
08:35It's a nice board.
08:37This is my husband, John.
08:38He's working on a chair, as usual.
08:41He was working before we met, and we were both married to other people at the time.
08:47Things happened.
08:49We commiserated and became friends.
08:52Originally, this was a lunch room, but no one was eating lunch here, so it became the chair shop.
08:58It's somewhat passive solar, so we're facing south, so the light, as the days shorten, comes farther and farther into
09:06the building and warms it up.
09:08This was the prototype for the Conway Studio, so it must have been done first.
09:12Yeah.
09:12In 58, and the other was finished during 59 or so.
09:15You'll notice the shape of the roof is the same.
09:17It just doesn't have that sine wave curve throughout.
09:19And it's smaller, and it's made of plywood instead of concrete.
09:23The three of us that work here, so it's a little tight, but we get along, we have to move
09:28through the room to do our various tasks.
09:31There was a sculptor in Japan named Nagurai, and he said that you couldn't have evil thoughts in a Nakashima
09:40chair.
09:40It puts you in a certain state.
09:42So, in a sense, for George, a chair is like a throne.
09:46You should sense something in yourself, and the chair is helping you to make that connection.
10:03This building was the only non-George building on the property.
10:07It was built in 1990, after my father passed away, because he had this huge pile of lumber stored down
10:14in Philadelphia.
10:16And as soon as he died, they said, we need the space.
10:20Move it.
10:20Get it out of here.
10:21So, my daughter Maria, who's also an architect, drafted what we needed as far as space.
10:28We built the first half of this pole barn in 1990, and the second half in 1995, because we ran
10:34out of space.
10:35So, this is where we store our lumber.
10:37The majority of the furniture that we make is made with American black walnut, or cherry.
10:41But, there are a great many species in here, about 50.
10:44Some of the more notable ones are things like Persian walnut and English walnut.
10:48We actually have some Persian walnut logs right here.
10:50They're the ones marked with red paint on the side.
10:52Those come from Iran.
10:53We also have some of our East Indian rosewood blocks right there, which we use for our butterflies.
10:59So, during George's time, he was able to purchase whole logs from other countries.
11:03Nowadays, that's not possible, because you can't import a log from another country,
11:08because it has to be properly processed in its country of origins, as to not bring in invasive species.
11:13So, nowadays, it's nearly impossible to get these species, like our Persian walnut, like our English walnut.
11:18Won't let them in.
11:20Get a good smuggler.
11:22Smuggle a log.
11:25Will this fit in my suitcase?
11:42When we moved to this property, Dad didn't have enough money in the bank to buy the property itself,
11:49but he fell in love with the south-facing slope, and he found out the man who owned it was
11:54a fellow MIT graduate,
11:56and he said, could I please have three acres of land to build on in exchange for labor on your
12:03farm?
12:03He said, okay, back in the 1940s, you could do things like that.
12:08He let my father build the workshop first, and he literally built it with his own two hands,
12:12and then he started building our house, which he also built with his own two hands.
12:22This is the old family house. It was actually the first house that was ours.
12:27When we first moved to the property, we lived in an old army tent in the back of this building.
12:33Well, Dad built this, and he concentrated on finishing this shop first, so he could earn a living.
12:40He was probably working on projects in this shop, too, and finishing this house in his spare time, which he
12:45didn't have much of.
12:47Was this where I grew up, or I used to roller skate in here?
12:53This used to be my room here, and I was allowed to paint murals on the walls here.
12:58They're like Fusuma doors in Japan. It covers the closet.
13:02This was the early one with skunks and animals, and this is the later one with the Thunderbird there on
13:08the right-hand side.
13:09When was the first Thunderbird made?
13:11I have no idea. I know nothing about cars.
13:16This is the room that Dad built for me when my brother was born in 1954,
13:21and I moved in and lived here until I left for college in 1963, and it's nice remembering when I
13:30was here.
13:31This is my parents' bedroom, and my parents always lived here, and pictures on the wall are pretty much the
13:38way they were when my parents lived here.
13:40These are both bench-on piece doves.
13:42The tea cart there was designed by my father for my mother.
13:46She had trouble walking. It's on casters, so she could carry stuff around.
13:50I think these were wedding presents from my father and mother from somebody a long time ago,
13:56and she kept pictures of friends and relations in her room.
14:07I remember the trees were much smaller, and Dad used to call it mirrorland, and I was little.
14:13It was magical.
14:15Dad did not teach me anything directly, and I learned what I learned from the workmen directly.
14:22When I came in in 1970, Dad was giving them these little half-page sketches of freehand drawings and a
14:29few rough dimensions,
14:31and that was their plan for making their furniture.
14:41This is the Arts Building. It was one of my father's experimentations in thin-shell construction.
14:47It's a hyperbolic paraboloid shell roof, and it was built in 1967 as a gallery for a bench-on.
14:54And Ben-Shawn came by after it was under construction and said,
14:58Oh, George, you really need a mosaic on the wall.
15:00So we have a Ben-Shawn mosaic on the outside of this building.
15:04All the furniture in this space is from George's era.
15:07In particular, this piece right here is my favorite on the property.
15:10This is one of our Arlen tables.
15:12This one's made with redwood, which comes from California.
15:15All of the redwood we have came from a forest fire.
15:18So you can see this one has really lovely charring on the outside and has taken this really interesting shape
15:23because it's a root burl.
15:25So it comes from underneath the earth.
15:27Really beautiful piece.
15:28It's funny when people just try to put down their drink and it falls straight through.
15:34Everybody who comes here and tries to walk up those stairs is a little bit afraid of walking on them
15:39because it doesn't look like it should stand.
15:41They're all cantilevered into the wall and there's no railing.
15:44This building was built before building code came to Bucks County.
15:47So we got away with it.
15:49My parents used to have cocktail parties here.
15:52And it was it was kind of amusing to watch people walk up and down the stairs with a drink
15:57in hand.
15:58It was a little risky, but nobody's fallen off yet.
16:01Not even you.
16:02I wasn't that clumsy.
16:04Give me some credit.
16:07This is one of my favorite tables.
16:09It was is one of the largest single board tops of its time.
16:13I think it was built in mid 1960s.
16:16And dad had gone to England to purchase these logs.
16:19And he found this English oak burl log and among a bunch of other logs, English walnut.
16:26And he was so proud of himself.
16:28He said the Queen of England should have sold her jewels and kept those logs.
16:31But I got them.
16:33This is a Harry Bertoia sound sculpture and it's about to make a lot of noise.
16:44I love that thing.
16:56This is the reception house.
16:58This building was built in 1974.
17:00So George knew that this was going to be the last building he was going to be able to build
17:02here.
17:02With that in mind, he used some of the best materials available to him.
17:06So we have some really great pieces of furniture in here.
17:07This headboard is made with English oak burl.
17:10The coffee table is made with Buckeye burl.
17:12George also built this building during the energy crisis.
17:15So he thought fossil fuels wouldn't last this forever.
17:17So this house is entirely run with electrics.
17:20George intended this building being kind of a retirement home for him and his wife.
17:25But he never ended up retiring.
17:27So they never ended up moving in.
17:28But this space has always been used as a place to host.
17:33Part of the reason Dad built this is he was working on Governor Rockefeller's home in Pocantico
17:38Hills, which was designed by Junzo Yoshimura, his best friend from the Raymond office.
17:43They asked Junzo to do the furniture and he says, why don't you have my friend George do that instead?
17:48So that was one of the biggest commissions we've ever had.
17:51So we had more money to spend on things like new buildings than we did before.
17:57He actually imported plaster from Japan for the entryway and also the Japanese room.
18:03It's the only Japanese room on the property that has a four and a half mat footprint.
18:07And has been used for tea ceremony and also as an extra bedroom.
18:11The bathtub looks pretty extravagant.
18:14It is a sunken bath and it's decorated with penny round Japanese tiles.
18:20And my children were quite young at the time in the seventies.
18:23And Dad invited them to write their names for eternity in this tile bathtub and create their own little designs.
18:30And my brother has his name in the tiles in the bathroom as well.
18:35And the fireplace is built like an old Pennsylvania farmhouse.
18:39So that when the fire gets going, it heats the entire building and it stays hot enough so that you
18:44could cook in the stone walls.
18:50When my father passed away in 1990, we decided we should expand its mission to include the preservation of the
18:58Nakashima buildings and property in New Hope.
19:01And even though my mother is gone, now my brother also is gone.
19:06We still have our woodworkers and our officers of the woodworking operation focused entirely on making furniture.
19:22In Western education, you're taught to develop your ego and do your own thing and design something different than anybody
19:30else ever did.
19:31And Dad was not that way.
19:33He was very rooted in tradition.
19:36And I think understanding the traditions of the past and the traditions of woodworking from the past are really important
19:44not to lose.
19:46And it's also respecting the material.
19:49People nowadays cut down thousands of acres of trees and there's so much material, it's wasted.
19:56And Dad did not want to waste material.
19:59I think that's a really good lesson for today's society, not to waste what nature has given us and to
20:06make the best use of it.
20:08You're not alone.
20:11It's not right.
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