Nakashima-style furniture and Arts & Crafts lamps come together at the Hopewell Train Station.
By: Ilene Dube
In the photograph, Ru Amagasu, then 24, is standing next to his grandfather. Wearing a gray T-shirt with a stretched-out neck, bright yellow shorts and a red-and-black lumber jacket, he looks more like a high school athlete, just back from a workout. In the background, Japanese-influenced architecture is surrounded by trees.
The octogenarian in the picture is George Nakashima, innovative furniture designer of the mid-20th century who paid great respect to "The Soul of a Tree" (and used that as the title for his 1981 book on a woodworker’s reflections on letting the wood speak). The year of the photo is 1990, and the father of the American craft movement had suffered a stroke. He would die a month later.
"He had a very funny sense of humor after the stroke," Mr. Amagasu, 41, recalls tenderly. Young Ru had grown up with his grandfather in New Hope, Pa., and at the time of the stroke he’d been teaching English in Japan while studying the country’s language, calligraphy and kendo (fencing). "He wanted me back," says Mr. Amagasu, who had to "spring" his grandfather from the hospital, according to an essay by his mother, Mira Nakashima, in the December 2006 Sotheby’s catalog, New Life for the Noble Tree. (The Dr. Arthur and Evelyn Krosnick Princeton collection of more than 100 Nakashima pieces was sold at auction; the original Nakashima pieces, built over a 30-year period, had burned in a 1989 fire, and when her father died one year into the remaking of all the furniture, Mira took over the project.)
"It was tough for me when he died because I was just getting to know him as a man," says Mr. Amagasu, reflecting on the evolution of their relationship from grandfather-as-mentor-to-young-boy. "I was always a kind of rambunctious kid, and one day when I was joking around, he gave me this look and said, ‘You are very mischievous you’ll go far.’"
Indeed, Mr. Amagasu has gone far. Some 17 years later, he is lead designer at Willard Historic Trees and Fine Furniture in Hamilton, carrying on his grandfather’s tradition of making a spiritual connection between the furniture and clients. Like his grandfather, he lets the wood tell its own story, and some of the wood he is using comes from felled historic trees of the Princeton/Bucks County region: the Princeton Elm (mother of all Dutch elm disease-resistant trees, formerly growing in the Princeton Cemetery), the Lawrenceville School Elm, the Present Day Club Kentucky Coffee, the Princeton Stockton Cherry and the Yardley Meeting Walnut.
Last year, Mr. Amagasu donated a coffee table made from the Princeton Elm to the Historical Society of Princeton’s antique show and fundraiser, in memory of the late Gail Stern, past director of the society. He will team up with ceramic artist and lampmaker Jim Webb (see box) at the Hopewell Train Station June 1 to 3 for a show and sale of their work.
Ru is short for Satoru, which means "enlightenment" in Japanese. Satoru was born in Japan where his parents were studying architecture. His grandfather, who was American-born, didn’t name him, but "anything our family does is influenced by my grandfather," says Mr. Amagasu.
In turn, everything in the Nakashima legacy was influenced by the internment of George, his wife, Marion, and their daughter, Mira, during World War II, after George had studied architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and gone on to make a name for himself as an architect in France and Japan. While living out of a tent, George learned to love wood and craft it from a fellow woodworker in the camp. When the family was released, they moved to New Hope and established the woodworking business.
In his furniture, "people can really feel the exuberance and freedom George had after being set free from the camp," says his grandson.
Young Ru always knew he would be a woodworker. He says his grandfather couldn’t wait until the boy got his working papers at age 14 so he could go to work on the grounds crew. He was expected to start at 7:30 a.m., and Grandpa George would be there at 7:34 to check up.
"I remember him as gracious and loving," says Mr. Amagasu. "He’d built a reception house in the ’80s where we had family dinners."
Nakashima was a good cook with a limited repertoire, recalls his grandson. "He used to have a ‘flower viewing party’ in April or May every year, which was, coincidentally, near his birthday," he says. "My siblings (Maria, Shanti and Misha) and I would direct traffic. His signature dish was char-shu pork he’d make in a beehive barbecue, and it was to die for. He built a big fire with hot coals and scraps of walnut and would shove the marinated pork on a coat hanger and hang it from the slate on top. It was charred on the outside and smoked on the inside.
"People would fight over it," he continues. "It was my job to cut it up and often I didn’t even make it to the table." There were many good cooks in his family, he quickly adds, and Mr. Amagasu went through his own restaurant apprenticeship, doing everything from valet parking at Odette’s in New Hope to working as sauté chef at Tramp’s Café in New York City.
At Syracuse University, Mr. Amagasu studied operations management and finance, then earned an MBA from Carnegie Mellon before working as a management consultant for the aerospace industry in Seattle. "I always knew I’d come back to the family business but I wanted to bring something back," he says. "My grandfather had natural native talents and principles, but my grandmother took care of the nuts and bolts and made sure you got paid. The success of the business was due to having the mundane taken care of so my grandfather could focus on the creative, although my grandmother was unrecognized."
Wanting to be involved in both the creative end as well as the business end, Mr. Amagasu returned in 2002, but when Sam Willard invited him to join the Hamilton operation, he couldn’t turn down the creative opportunity to put his own stamp on his work. The Willard Brothers operation includes everything from selling Christmas trees to removing dead trees and sawing them into lumber, as well as selling exotic woods from all over the world. No part of the tree goes to waste; what can’t be used is ground up and sold as mulch.
"Sam used to sell wood to my grandfather," he says. "In his teens, Sam would deliver ice to my grandfather on Aquetong Road" 150 yards from where Mr. Amagasu lives now with his wife and their 3½-year-old son. "Sam loves trees more than anyone I’ve ever met, including my grandfather. You can’t believe the kind of weather Sam goes out in, saving trees." Mr. Amagasu has seen the 79-year-old Mr. Willard working the day after Christmas and the day after New Year’s, even though he is technically retired. "I’ve seen him come in soaking wet with a poncho over his head and happy as a clam."
He recounts how Mr. Willard went to Burlington City for a walnut tree that needed to be taken down for a development, and how he removed the root as well. "Most people will not take out roots and mill it because there are rocks in the earth. He brought experience and blades and it worked."
Lamenting development and the fate of large old trees, Mr. Amagasu points to the silver lining: "Furniture is a very nice way of keeping the tree alive."
Looking at a table made from a slice of that walnut root, burly, gnarly and with holes like Swiss cheese, Mr. Amagasu describes it as a sobriety test: "If guests can’t figure out where to put their drink, they’ve had too much."
Once he has constructed a piece, Mr. Amagasu will finish it with a penetrating oil, such as tung or linseed, as his grandfather did. The oil gives more depth to the look of the piece, but when clients want something more water resistant, he’ll rub it with a hybrid finish that is a trade secret.
Once a tree comes into the shop, it has to age one year for every inch of thickness. Dry heat may be used to expedite the process. Mr. Amagasu likes to experiment with different woods and aesthetics, especially in making chairs. He may make a table top from a slice of catalpa, and use wenge, an African wood, for the base.
"Butterflies are a technique that was used for a long time in China and Japan," he says. "My grandfather changed that in using it decoratively he was very honest about the fix but did it with nice wood and joinery." Mr. Amagasu likes to use ebony for the butterflies, although it is increasingly rare.
"We consume everything until it’s gone," he says. "Ebony is at the end of its cycle. It takes hundreds of years to grow, and it’s not being replanted." It is also the hardest wood to work with, literally. "It’s a real test of patience and machinery."
Walking from the showroom to his workshop in a former Christmas tree barn, Mr. Amagasu shows off a walnut-top table with a wenge base he’s getting ready for International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City May 19 to 22. The shape is long like a rectangle but curved on both sides. "It’s important to bring people together at a dining table, so this curves in," he says. "I want it to be beautiful and strong and functional but also to help people have a nice time together."
There is a coffee table with a redwood top that has blackened sections where it survived fires. The life cycle of a redwood tree includes a series of fires, after which the tree regenerates itself, and the technique employed by Nakashima and Mr. Amagasu allows the surface to tell the story of the tree’s life. On another table in progress, Mr. Amagasu rubs some water on it to bring out the rich patterning of the grain. "It’s always fun for us when (the piece is) all sanded, to put on that first coat of oil and see the most dramatic change," he says.
"Woodworking is one of those things that, if you’re fastidious about it, you never get it right," says Mr. Amagasu. "It takes good hands and a brain; it takes a lot of thought to focus and concentrate for long periods of time on the same thing. My part is to create an environment where people can learn and come into a full set of skills as much as the wood can."
Does he hope his own son will someday follow in the family path? "It’s most important that he be healthy and happy," Mr. Amagasu says of young Katsutoshi. "He’ll have to find his own way, but I do want him to live close and be a part of my life it would be wonderful if we could work together."
Art/Craft/Design Jim Webb: Lamps Ru Amagasu: Furniture will be on view at the Hopewell Train Station, Railroad Avenue, Hopewell, June 1, 6-8 p.m., and June 2-3, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. For the June 1 artists’ reception, RSVP: (609) 466-2064. A portion of the sales from the exhibition will support the D&R Greenway Land Trust and St. Michael’s Preservation Project. Willard Historic Trees and Fine Furniture is located at 300 Basin Road, Hamilton; (609) 587-4247; www.willardfinefurniture.com. Studio 233 on the Web: www.studio-233.com