A Chair is a Chair is a Chair

George Nakashima’s reverence for the spirit of the wood can be compared with the beliefs of European Modernists. An exhibit at the Michener Museum does just that.

By: Ilene Dube

"George


George Nakashima’s "Long Chair," above, and "Grass-seated Chair" (below, left), embody the form-follows-function credo of Modernism.

   Everything that’s old is new again, and everything that’s new is soon old, and therefore new again. The Modern movement in architecture and design, nearly half a century old, is suddenly all the rage. Print and TV ads are photographed in Modern interiors with Modern furniture; museums from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art are focusing exhibits on Modernism in art and design. Contemporary coffee tables are brimming over with books following the trend.
   The James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown is showing George Nakashima and the Modernist Moment, exploring the similarities in furniture design between American-born Nakashima and the European Modernists working at the same time.

"George

   George Nakashima’s love for the forms and spirit of the natural world evolved in the Pacific Northwest of his childhood. After earning an architecture degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and travel and further study in Europe, he went to Tokyo to work. With his new wife, he returned to Seattle, but his career was interrupted by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Nakashima, his wife and their daughter were sent to an internment camp in Idaho for a year. When released, the family moved to New Hope and built a woodworking studio. Following Nakashima’s death in 1990, the studio has been run by his daughter, Mira Nakashima-Yarnall.
   Considered one of America’s foremost furniture designers, Nakashima was known for his spiritual vision and respect for the relationship between man and tree.

"Carlo


Carlo Mollino’s "Rolltop Desk."

   "The love for the nature of teak and walnut can best be obtained by working with the material; by cutting, planing, scraping and sanding the wood," wrote Nakashima. "The hours spent by the true craftsman in bringing out the grain, which has long been imprisoned in the trunk of the tree, are themselves an act of creation. He passes his hand over the satiny texture and finds God within."
   The Michener exhibit includes 33 works by Nakashima, as well as masterworks by celebrated European designers Fin Juhl, Gio Ponti, Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouve, Carlo Mollino and Alexandre Noll. There, against a gauze scrim background is the Conoid bench, quintessential Nakashima, in walnut, hickory and rosewood. The seat of the bench is a large slice of a tree, made satiny smooth, split by a lovely crack with natural ragged edges, joined by three butterfly dowels. From a knot in the seat, a branch below peers through. This natural form is contrasted with the refined precision of the back spindles, a nod to Americana.
   Nakashima’s long chair, made of black walnut, cotton and sea grass, begs to be stretched out on, with its soft white webbing and long wide arm rest, perfect for books, magazines, a drink, perhaps even a place to rest the arm.

"Alexandre


Alexandre Noll’s "Commode with two drawers," above, follows the spirit of the wood.

   An upholstered chair with sleek walnut arms and legs looks like a predecessor to the Danish modern movement.
   At the center of the exhibit are three desks: Conoid cross-legged desk by Nakashima, 1960; Rolltop desk by Carlo Molino, 1950; and Rounded compass desk by Jean Prouve, 1958. Although all three are about design, the Nakashima seems to invite actual work, with contours that follow the shape of the human body.
   Kneeling along the platform where these desks stand, a perfect angle to view their joinery and triangulation, are Steven Beyer, curator of the exhibit, and Roy McMakin, exhibit designer. Both men are sculptors, and Mr. McMakin is a furniture designer as well. The two have passionately engaged in dialogue over Nakashima’s position in Modernism for years. At this moment, they are fine-tuning the exact shade of off-white for the "Do not touch" sign.
   Of course, this rich, deeply colored, intricately grained sea of walnut, teak, rosewood and maple begs tactile union. And what are chairs for, if not to relieve the strains of verticality for tired museum-goers? The curator and designer have intimate knowledge of these pieces, and can assure the viewer that, yes, the Nakashima long chair is lovely to lie on, especially in an outdoor setting, and the grass-seated chair offers comfortable support at a dining table, albeit forcing upright posture.

"Charlotte


Charlotte Perriand’s "Slipper Chair," 1953, above, represented a female touch during a period of male domination in design.

   "Modernist design in postwar Europe and the United States was predicated on the rationalist notion that form be dictated by function and a utopian commitment to design for the common man," writes Mr. Beyer in the exhibit catalog. "While modernist furniture certainly reflected the curves and logic of the human body, it did so within an unambiguously industrial idiom… By using mass-production techniques to create elegant and functional furniture that was affordable to all, these designers embodied the American commitment to a postwar ethic of democracy and capitalism."
   But Nakashima was "destined to confound," according to Mr. Beyer, and his methods of production incorporate both simple hand tools and industrial principles.
   "At the same time, the organic quality of his forms and his embrace of limited production techniques…(his) sense of the aesthetics, architecture and engineering of furniture reveals a greater affinity to the practice and tradition of European modernist design."

"Finn


Finn Juhl’s "Chieftain Chair," 1949, above, regenerated the Danish design movement.

   The exhibit seeks to place Nakashima in the context of the European modernists. The MIT-trained architect had been exposed to European modernist architecture by the time he got to Asia, having lived in Paris from 1933-1934, where he was persuaded by the movement’s ideological stance on "the great hope for the future of art and humanity."
   While in Tokyo, Nakashima studied the work of French designer and Le Corbusier collaborator Charlotte Perriand, whose 1953 slipper chair, looking strikingly feminine, is part of the Michener show. In a 1941 show in a Tokyo department store, Ms. Perriand exhibited a large table, the top of which was cut from a tree root. The piece retained the tree’s natural edge, a theme that resurfaced a decade later in Nakashima’s own work.
   Nakashima’s struggle to integrate the natural and the industrial was in line with his European contemporaries; they all shared a passionate understanding of their materials and a deep regard for traditional forms. Both Nakashima and French designer Alexandre Noll shared a spiritual relationship to wood and the trees from which they came. Alexandre Noll’s commode with two drawers looks like something that was removed from an elfin cottage, with cartoon-like rounded drawers, exaggerated tongue-and-groove joints, giant knobs and ball feet. Yet despite this comical charm, its reverence for the wood is evident in the natural chasms that have been retained.
   Mr. McMakin had seen photographs of the Noll commode, but was seeing it in person for the first time during the installation. He was visibly excited by this piece. "It’s surprisingly more goofy that I had expected," he admits.
George Nakashima and the Modernist Moment will be on view at the James A. Michener Art Museum, 138 S. Pine St., Doylestown, Pa., through Sept. 16. Hours: Tues.-Fri. 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Wed. until 9 p.m. Admission: $6; students $2.50; seniors $5.50. For information, call (215) 340-9800. On the Web: michenerartmuseum.org