The simple art of freeform wood

To the naked eye, the planks of wood were just that – slabs of natural wood, two shaped liked a boot, the others with fancy edges. But to the trained eye of an artisan, there stood a dining room table, a desk or an end table.

These were not the most fancy of freeform wood I had seen before, but looking at them gave me ideas of their possibilities. The pieces were for sale at auction recently, standing upright in an outside area among furniture, rugs and other errant pieces.

The instant I saw the slabs I was reminded of the great craftsman George Nakashima, who made an art of working with freeform wood slabs. I could see these being worked into something fantastic by the Nakashima group. He died in 1990, and now his daughter Mira Nakashima-Yarnall runs the company in Bucks County, PA.

I soon ventured back into the auction house to escape the sun and almost bumped into a coffee table that had been created out of the wood. It was a simple shape, round, smooth and curved at one end and shallow and curved at the other. It was a very dark wood with inelegant legs and no screws. The legs had been fitted into slots in the tabletop.

This table wasn’t the only freeform there: Sitting nearby was a chunky table of very light wood, almost the color yellow, but smaller in circumference than the other one.

Intrigued, I started to look around the auction house for others and found one: A beautiful dark wood table among the items being sold in the auction house’s Decorative Arts offerings. It was described on the bid sheet as a Freeform Slab Burl Wood Table with Metal Hairpin Legs. The table was 3 ½” thick and 4 ½” long. It had only minor blemishes.

The table sold for $650. Two months ago, the auction house had sold a similar table for $300.

These prices, though, are bargains compared to what you’d pay for a George Nakashima table. He is considered a great innovator of modern design who could take a piece of wood and turn it into a masterpiece. He was a prominent figure in the American craft movement, and several sites called him the father of the movement.

In a statement of his philosophy he made in 1962, he talked about “the beauty of simple things.”

“Our approach is based on direct experience – a way of life and development outward from an inner core; something of the same process that nature uses in the creation of a tree – with one addition, the aspiration of man to produce the wonder and beauty of his potentialities – no ‘statements,’ no ‘pillars of design,’ no personal expression, no frivolity, but an outlook both severe and spontaneous.”

In his works, Nakashima seemed to allow the wood to do the talking through his hands – without ornamentation, without judgment, just letting the inspiration flow from the wood. Or in other words, just letting the wood be, just like sometimes we’d just like to be. He seemed to work from within the wood to bring out its natural beauty, which was there waiting for release, not escape.

Nakashima was trained as an architect but became disillusioned with the design practices of his day (he was born in Spokane, Washington, in 1905, and later worked in Japan and the United States). He, his wife and daughter were sent to a Japanese internment camp in Idaho in 1942 where he learned woodworking from a skilled Japanese-American carpenter. A former employer got him out of the camp, sponsoring Nakashima to work on his farm in Bucks County. He built his first showroom in 1954 near New Hope, PA, and later added other buildings (as well as his home).

Mira and other crafts people at the company are still making dining tables, coffee tables, beds, end tables, desks, benches, lamps and more.

Once you see a Nakashima piece, you’ll always recognize it. His signature is large slabs of undecorated wood with smooth tops and natural edges, some with pieces held together with what are called butterfly joints.

As for the auction planks, I wasn’t around when they were sold, but I do wonder how they would be used. I came across several companies on the web that sell the beautiful wood.

I’m hoping that this buyer will hand them off to an artist with the sensibilities of Nakashima.