Today, we visited the studio of famed furniture maker George Nakashima in New Hope, PA, where his daughter, Mira, continues to make furniture in the same tradition. Mira began our tour by telling us about her father’s life and work.
The first building we visited was the wood barn, filled with enormous slabs of wood cut from whole trees and stacked together for drying in the sequence in which they were cut from the log. Mira explained the challenges of storing, keeping track of, and accessing the wood, much of which is stored for many years.
Many slabs were marked in chalk with customer names, measurements, cut lines, and other information.
This dining set was in a residence built by Nakashima in the early 1970s.
What is known as the art building is also the home of the Nakashima Foundation for Peace.
The silver appearance of the table edges in this photograph is caused by the camera flash. The edges are actually the dark, barkless natural surface of the trunk.
Notice how the concrete wall at the top of the stairs follows the same line as the right edge of the stairs.
I liked the way the stairs looked viewed sideways just as well.
The loft in the art building held samples of many types of chairs.
Jean-François enjoyed speaking French with Kevin Nakashima, who learned it in high school from a native French speaker.
The pond outside the showroom had very vocal frogs among the water lilies. I thought their croaking was some sort of squawk from a walkie-talkie until I squatted down and looked.