After the passing away of the legendary George Nakashima in 1990, Mira took the role of the creative director of George Nakashima’s studio. She has relentlessly continued the studio’s philosophy of the woodworkers devotion to the sacrifice of the tree, preserved, and championed the studio’s techniques embraced by her father.
With over forty years of practice in the studio, Mira Nakashima has an exceptionally intuitive and technical knowledge of the characteristic qualities of wood. A designer in her own right, she has taken the time-honoured traditional designs to a new artistic paradigm. As she carves out a legacy of her own, she fondly remembers her father’s phrase “Keep your nose clean and create a little beauty around you.” She recollects the soaring, light-filled space of the Conoid Studio and the furniture within, designed and built by her father in the 1960's and the many storerooms full of wood waiting to be selected and made into something as a constant source of inspiration. She feels content that the memorial room, she designed and built in honour of her father at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Pennsylvania is still being used as a quiet sanctuary, ceaselessly inspiring the lives of creative individuals’ world over.
INSITE had the honour of interacting with Mira Nakashima on her journey from an understudy to her father to a virtuoso.
1. Could you tell us about the philosophy and ethos behind the Nakashima Studio, and the work it undertakes?
My father was very much inspired and motivated by his experience at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, and instinctively followed the path of Soetsu Yanagi’s “Unknown Craftsman” in which good craftsmanship and good design are more important than the individual ego. Wood is not only our medium, but our partner in creativity. The simplicity, honesty and utilitarianism of the American Shaker tradition are essential to our work, as is a saying by the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, “Beauty is the divine language in forms.”
This story is from the January 2017 edition of Insite.
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This story is from the January 2017 edition of Insite.
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