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George Nakashima (1905-1990), Bucks County
furniture maker par excellence, has been nearly everyone's favorite
craft artist for decades. Ostensibly, his innovative furniture
was based on traditional Japanese woodworking techniques and imbued
with a folksy spirituality. Now, we're told, he was not truly
a craft artist or woodworker at all, but rather a worldly and
sophisticated Modernist designer. In this exhibition at the Michener
Museum, guest curator Steve Beyer (a sculptor and former assistant
artistic director/director of public programs at The Fabric Workshop
and Museum) positions Nakashima's work next to its European counterparts
from roughly the same era. On display are 18 choice pieces of
furniture by Nakashima, along with several representative pieces
each by Finn Juhl, Carlo Mollino, Alexandre Noll, Charlotte Perriand,
Gio Ponti and Jean Prouvé.
Beyer has made some great picks and placed Nakashima in good company.
From the dainty and elegant Super Leggera chair of Gio Ponti to
Alexandre Noll's clunky Commode with Two Drawers, we can compare
a range of Modernist approaches to designing crafted furniture.
The similarities between the designers are remarkable. All but
one were trained as architects. All had an abiding interest in
materials (mainly wood), engineering and craftsmanship. Most preferred
small production runs. And much of their furniture has a remarkable
formal similarity. For instance, Charlotte Perriand's petite Slipper
Chair (1953) has blocky horizontal and vertical cushions (tan
with brown piping) on a stylish low-slung base made of shaped
plywood. Placed next to it in the show, Nakashima's 4' Settee
(1950) has similar blocky cushions (tan with black nubs) and a
nearly identical base design, though his is angled more for comfort
and made out of polished walnut. Perriand, like Nakashima, worked
in Japan for several years, and they both, possibly as a result
of this experience, made use of natural-edged wood in their furniture.
Formal comparisons can also be made between
Nakashima's Upholstered Chair (Widdicomb) (1960) and Danish architect
and designer Finn Juhl's Chieftan Chair (1949). Both chairs are
carefully structured out of shaped and polished wood forms that
suggest the natural forms in driftwood and tree branches. Carlo
Mollino also used rounded wood forms engineered into structures
in his Side Chair (1947). In Mollino's furniture, the individually
shaped wood components have a sculptural liveliness that almost
defy their function as furniture. On another note, Nakashima and
Alexandre Noll both liked to leave the wood surface somewhat raw
and natural, as seen in Noll's rustic Table Basse (1947) and Nakashima's
Brogren Stool (1946). They also shared an interest in the spiritual
and physical life of the tree.
While most of the pieces of furniture
in the exhibition were made in small production runs of about
six to no more than 140, some are one-of-a-kind pieces, and others
were mass produced, like Ponti's Super Leggera chair (1953) -
which can still be ordered from Cassina, USA - and Prouvé's
Standard Chair (c. 1950). The classic Stnadrard Chair has a black
tubular steel frame and front legs, the seat and back are made
of curved plywood, and the back legs are narrow at the top and
bottom but thicken in a preposterous fashion in the middle where
they attach to the seat. Yet this is really good design - it works,
it's interesting and it looks great. Like Nakashima, Prouvé
brought his training as a craftsman and an architect to bear in
his designs. On the other end of the spectrum, Gio Ponti's unique
Table (1942) is made of oak with inset copper tiles on the top
that have been etched and enameled with velvety red and white
patterns like hieroglyphics. Ponti, like Nakashima, preferred
making furniture unique or in very small production runs.
Demonstrating the best case for Nakashima's
skills as a furniture designer are Long Chair (1951) and Conoid
Bench with Back (1961). Long Chair was mass produced on a very
limited scale and is a well-conceived and beautifully made piece
of furniture. Its design was clearly based on a conventional lounge
chair, but Nakashima's choice of materials - black walnut, cotton
and sea grass - is odd, inspired and lovely. The chair has one
giant armrest that extends, generously and brutally, down its
entire length. This armrest is made of a wide plank with a smooth-planed
edge on the inside near the user and a natural edge on the outside,
which functions like a small coffee table. Conoid Bench with Back
is made of a huge slab of walnut held up by four short spindle
legs and has a row of 23 elegant hickory spindles (attached in
the traditional manner with wedges) fitted into a curving rosewood
back. Rosewood butterflies join a meandering split in the wood
seat.
More than anything, this show offers a
great opportunity to see - and examine - up close the individual
pieces of classic Modernist furniture it contains. When I visited
the Michener a couple weekends ago, a number of enthusiasts went
so far as to lie down on the floor next to a piece of furniture
and peer upwards at its underside. Joining in, I soon found out
why. Many of the joints in Nakashima's furniture (such as Conoid
Bench ) make use of traditional techniques in a unique and inspired
way. But, there were surprising inconsistencies, even rude shortcuts,
in the "traditional Japanese craftsmanship" of some
of Nakashima's furniture. Slab Coffee Table #1, 1945, for example,
has kludgy disks (wooden washers) awkwardly screwed onto its underside
with the spindle legs jutting out of them. Perhaps these puzzling
details, in a funny way, will help to demythologize Nakashima
and just get us back to looking at the work. And, theoretical
repositioning aside, the best reason to see this show is to experience
firsthand the excellent and beautiful furniture it contains.
Reproduced courtesy of the Philadelphia
City Paper
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