Mira Nakashima became president and creative director of George Nakashima Woodworkers in 1990, after her father George Nakashima died. Mira, a Harvard graduate, followed in her father’s footsteps by majoring in architecture, although her interest at the time was languages. After graduating Harvard, Mira pursued post graduate studies in Japan.
George Nakashima practiced architecture in Seattle for seven years, but after traveling abroad to India, Japan, he decided he didn’t want to be an architect anymore, so in 1941 he started a furniture business. Mira says, “He saw that furniture was the same as architecture, only smaller. Today we work with raw material that comes from logs and trees in Bucks County that nobody wants. The process is the same as when my father began.”
When Mira returned from graduate school, she worked in the office. “I was my mother’s gopher. So I did all the grub work in the office.” Eventually Mira learned the craft from design to actually hands-on furniture making, although she hasn’t made furniture since 1990. She now helps clients pick out the wood and she designs furniture.
For the hands-on crafting of the furniture, Mira gives credit to skilled craftsmen, some who have been trained in Europe. She explains, “We have a shop of about 17 people that we've assimilated over the years. We just retired one of them, and he's been with us for 50 years. We try to maintain this tradition of furniture making. It's passed on from one person to the next. And as time goes on, and things evolve, some ways of doing things change a little bit, but we have basically kept the same methodology.”
Nakashima only makes furniture out of wood. “My father spent a lot of time in the Pacific woods, and he actually majored in forestry for two years before he switched to architecture. In the beginning our dad was trying to buy lumber to make furniture with, but he couldn't afford the good lumber. So he went to the lumber yard and bought things cut off from the leftovers, and the parts of the trees that nobody wanted. And so he decided that these leftover pieces of wood with the natural edges on them and all their flaws were beautiful.”
With the exception of chairs, the wood itself determines the shape of Nakashima furniture. “We have a lot of variations in the two-flex. The seats themselves are cut out of wood that we have here, and there's a lot of variation in the different kinds of two-flex. We often invite people to pick out their own two-flex, and then we make the chairs. But the dimensions, and the forms, and so forth, are pretty much the way Dad set them.”
A Nakashima finish allows you to see deep into the wood. Mira says, “We use only a natural oil finish. Dad did not believe in a hard lacquer finish, because people in the previous centuries used to think that was a way to preserve the wood. But Dad understood that if you do a penetrating oil finish, you actually get to see the character and the color of the wood much more easily than if you just put a coat on the outside. Plus, he felt that people should be able to feel the grain, and be in contact with the wood, if they have a piece of furniture, rather than being peeled off from each other.”
To get Nakashima furniture, you do not come directly to the showroom. You have to make an appointment. “During the pandemic,” Mira explains, when we were not allowed to have visitors, people were very good about resolving the wood selection and so forth by emailing photographs. And the majority of our business is still done that way, but now that we're open to the public, people will come in by appointment and buy their wood in real life.”
To inquire or set up an appointment with George Nakashima Woodworkers, call 215-862-2272 and for more information, visit www.nakashimawoodworkers.com