92
George Nakashima
Single-arm rocking chair
- Estimate
- $12,000 - 18,000
Lot Details
Persian walnut, hickory.
1974
33 7/8 x 32 x 28 1/2 in. (86 x 81.3 x 72.4 cm)
Underside signed in black marker with Studio Rocker. Together with a copy of a letter of authenticity from Mira Nakashima and a copy of the original order card.
Specialist
Full-Cataloguing
Catalogue Essay
The present lot was originally owned by Hayahiko Takase, a Harvard-trained architect who gained fame for designing landmark buildings that would come to make up the Little Tokyo Historic District in Los Angeles. At the center of one of the largest Japanese-American populations in North America, Little Tokyo was declared a National Historic Landmark District in 1995.
Provenance
Literature
George Nakashima
American | B. 1905 D. 1990Working out of his compound in rural New Hope, Pennsylvania, George Nakashima produced some of the most original and influential furniture designs of the post-war era. Nakashima aimed to give trees a second life, choosing solid wood over veneers and designing his furniture to highlight the inherent beauty of the wood, such as the form and grain. To this end, his tables often feature freeform edges, natural fissures and knot holes. Nakashima was an MIT-trained architect and traveled widely in his youth, gaining exposure to modernist design the world over.The signature style he developed was the distillation of extraordinary, diverse experiences, which led to the establishment of his furniture-making business in 1946. In particular, his practice of Integral Yoga, which he studied while working under the architect Antonin Raymond on the construction of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India, had a lasting impact on his philosophy as a designer.After returning to the U.S. in 1940, Nakashima's family was interned in an American concentration camp, a horrible ordeal that nevertheless introduced him to traditional Japanese joinery by way of a Nisei woodworker he met in the camp. He incorporated these techniques and also drew on American vernacular forms, such as the Windsor chair. These diverse influences have resulted in immense crossover appeal in the world of twentieth-century design collecting.
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