Something Of a Druid

By J D. REED

Just days after their Princeton, N.J., house burned down, physician Arthur Krosnick and his wife Evelyn visited their friend George Nakashima. Over three decades, the Krosnicks had collected 114 pieces of furniture created by Nakashima, who lives in Bucks County, Pa. Now they asked the 84-year-old craftsman if he could re-create the collection, nearly all of which was lost in the fire. Any other octogenarian might have hesitated, but not Nakashima. With the same kind of powerful understatement that characterizes his furniture, he agreed, remarking, "You've been loyal, and I'd like to help."

For nearly half a century, Nakashima has been producing unique furniture for loyal clients. In the process, he has also built a distinguished reputation. Fellow furniture maker Sam Maloof calls him the "elder statesman" of the postwar American crafts movement; Anne d'Harnoncourt, director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, proclaims him "a national treasure." To further polish his renown, a warm and witty retrospective show of his work is now on view at the American Crafts Museum in New York City. "Full Circle" presents 43 of Nakashima's best pieces, from a battered 1944 teak coffee table to a masterly 1983 music stand whose top is a chunk of maple burl, complete with holes and fissures.

Nakashima appreciates the attention, but accolades run against his self- effacing grain. Trained as an architect at M.I.T., he took up furniture making after studying with spiritual leader Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, India, during the 1930s. "The negation of the ego," says Nakashima, "is central in Indian philosophy. If you can negate your ego, you can develop." During World War II, Nakashima advanced his craft in an Idaho detention camp for Japanese Americans. There he learned about prejudice. He also learned woodworking from a fellow internee who had been trained as a carpenter in Japan.

Nakashima's bench mark is the wood itself: form follows grain. He has gathered an extensive collection of lumber that includes slabs of Carpathian elm, Oregon myrtle and French olive ash. Nakashima says, "I'm something of a Druid," and he sallies into the woods to check promising trees himself. "I use logs that would be almost useless to commercial furniture makers, with their concern for regular grain and thin veneers," he adds. "If a tree has had a joyful life it produces a beautiful grain. Other trees have lived unhappily -- bad weather or a terrible location. We use both kinds."

No matter the wood's emotional state, Nakashima's furniture is distinguished by a tension between naturally shaped slabs of wood and meticulously worked support elements. While the base of a dining table may be crisply machined, Nakashima lets the natural "free edge" of the top planks determine the contour of the piece, instead of sawing a geometrical line.

A number of influences glow in Nakashima's work. His admiration for New England rustic is evident in slab coffee tables that are halved cherry and walnut logs. He interprets Shaker design in a 10-ft.-long bench made from a single plank of black walnut set with a spidery backrest of hickory spindles. But his genius is essentially Oriental, akin to that of Zen rock gardening and Oriental flower arranging. Nakashima selects the exact natural object needed to serve a particular purpose. For a recent table, he used an 8-ft. cross section of redwood root. The wild energy of the wood, complete with cracks and holes, strains outward, as if it were trying to dissolve back into the ground. But the wood is held together in places with 4-in.-wide butterfly-shaped splints of walnut, Nakashima's signature method of prompting the ancient to new service.

There is nothing precious in either Nakashima's designs or his workshop. He employs ten assistant craftsmen and uses some power tools to do the rough work. The oil finish of his furniture merely needs to be cleaned with a wet cloth. "We recommend hard use," says Nakashima. "A wood surface that is without a scratch or mar is kind of distressing. It shows no life and has no time value." His business approach is equally straightforward. "I wanted," he says, "to make furniture out of real wood without it costing that much more than you would pay in a good store." He sells only directly to customers. Prices for stock items range from $155 for a plank stool to $4,000 for a wall case.

With his concern for traditional workmanship and his devotion to organic simplicity, Nakashima tends to be disdainful of many of the latest generation of craftspeople. "They're trying to be Picassos," he says. "They've got all the ego and glitz and high gloss of modern art. But crafts don't need that. | They can stand up by themselves."