The Woodworkers

Georgia's buildings as with his furniture when you're using them they are to help you contemplate a chair the way it receives you you relax calm yourself but you maintain your dignity and your alertness a table is like an altar and the objects on the table that you might be using one way or another are to be considered sacred and the table helps you experience objects that way a cabinet is to take away the Clutter and put precious objects in a safe place honoring them Georgia's Watershed experience in India in practicing yoga was building a building that was their the yoga so it was meant to be a spiritual exercise that disciples engaged in so that not only the final result but the the work itself was to be done in a certain way that was conducive to Spiritual Development in in contact with the material world so that once the building was finished those that lived in it should carry on their sarona and the building would be conducive to that but the actual work in construction was to be done in such a way that the building would be infused with that spirit so whenever George designed or built from that time forth it was always with that in mind with that approach in mind that that the building the spirit in which was built the way in which it was built was integral to the spirit of the building and the final result so that the approach the material the the awareness of the spirit and the material the the proportions as Bill Whitaker the archivist at University of Pennsylvania his comment was there was no redundancy so that each part of it is done in in a conscious way relating it to the whole each part is making its contribution [Music] well I think what George was wanting to connect with was is the title of his book indicates the soul of the tree I'll try an 18. Thor yeah yeah I got called about um like two and a half three inch stops like likely but thanks good [Applause] we cut each tree each piece is individual I don't know I get kind of personal with the pieces we get excited over singing different patterns in the brain okay so far so good these pieces are beautiful they're magnificent my father was trying to decide what he wanted to do next in his life he hadn't studied Furniture Design per se but he decided to drop architecture as a profession and go into furniture and he said to me later that it was the same as architecture only smaller and he could control it from beginning to end and actually that makes it kind of complicated because we still start out with the log itself we buy the logs hole and Mill them then we have to dry them and wait for the right client to come along and select each piece of lumber for each job individually and then we design each piece of furniture individually before it goes into production so this is what we call the pole barn when my father passed in 1990 he had a huge pile of wood that he had sawn and it is actually our Legacy which we inherited from my father it's our source of inspiration whenever we we have orders to fill we have to come out here and sort through the wood pile and see what kind of wood we can use to do that project because he sits at his desk angled to the left and rights with his right hand so he would like it to have like a little curve out on the left side uh-huh I was looking at you know a bar on the bottom yeah from the bottom this one kind of rolls here what else was I looking what's up there oh no it was it was up front you want to pull that Olive yeah I'll find this we feel like dad's still watching over us we're still working on his wood we're still working on his inspiration and it's not just inspiration of the design but it's the way we work with wood I mean Dad felt that even when he was alive we were working against the the modern ethos of technology and mass production and and trying to make as much money as possible it was more important to him to make something of quality than it was to make something was to make a lot of money he says well you know couldn't you do with money the best thing you can do is buy some beautiful wood or have some beautiful land and of course build beautiful buildings so he lived his dream and we hope to continue that dream into the future thank you is that enough of a swoop I think so oh yeah one's cut right the ones that have that cut yeah I don't know if that works out to be on the left side or not might be a little too much angle into the body there [Music] I guess some of the wood will sit in here for decades waiting for the right project some of it is uh here for a few hours and gets used for something cool I'd take those so would I it's definitely unique you know the pile you're standing behind is Persian Walnut that has been here for 50 years you know can't be gotten again would you be able to forklift the crate [Music] I mostly grew up in Bucks County I attended a local Quaker high school that had a wonderful woodworking program and studio so I took woodworking during my time there no problem sure and loved it and always had in the back of my mind that I wanted to uh you know get back into it at some point I've had a pretty intimate relationship with the wood since I've been here since I you know started working in the bull barn and um you know continue to do so and do a lot of the wood selection and lumber and Dorian management and so um you know it's uh it's a special place for you know especially on the pole barn there the story of the wood from start to finish you know it's definitely easy to still get lost in the work you know I've heard me or I say that one of the reasons why she wanted to carry on was you know she felt a obligation to the wood and uh you know I feel a little bit of that as well [Music] thank you here we get to work the whole process all the way through growing up I just I just enjoyed watching my grandfather do woodworking went to college Bachelor's in Fine Arts actually a drawing degree you know did sculpture was designed and the job simply put it I've taken a lot of time and effort through the years to learn their ways learn the furniture new and the old move myself into the refinishing uh so I get to see a little bit of everything and it's it's fun you know to learn and you know I focused 27 years around learning everything I could about this place seeing how it was done in the past to how we do it now it's just phenomenally interesting and I had Jerry that helped coach me along we had Adam and Bob ice or I would say the thing I find most meaningful here is doing the training helping the new guys come in and succeed and do a really good job I mean it's stressful but it's probably most rewarding when they were you know they come out doing really good work and they're learning learn the process learn how the Nakashima Furniture is built try to continue those Traditions keep them in place so it doesn't evolve through everybody's little nuances into something else that's not nakashiva um and it's a tough thing to do everybody has their own little thing which yes is a part of each piece but to what extent and it's trying to keep it so at the end of the day it's not going to shame of furniture [Music] I had a lot of different jobs in my 20s I started really getting into woodworking I started taking classes at Bucks County Community College at one point I just decided I wanted to do this for work professionally so I started looking fortunately this place actually had an opening it was amazing that this was the place that I was able to start and it started in 1999 the work requires you to be really perceptive and just in tune with what you're doing and you never stop improving your craft you can never sort of just Coast through it you just have to kind of take your time and take care and make sure everything is is done to the bless your ability it's still really satisfying to to see the finished product at the end I still love all the designs that we do here and sometimes I'm still inspired by particular piece of wood with amazing figure a beautiful grain pattern the skill set grows all the time that's what I like about it you never stop learning there's always more to learn you know you always feel like you can do just a little bit better and that that's kind of the thrill of it I was just newly married and my wife and I just moved to the area I was doing refinishing and some restoration and then my wife by chance saw an ad in the newspaper where they were looking for finisher and I had no idea and you know I showed up and had an interview with Miron either she or somebody else took me into the finishing room to show me the furniture and I just I was just blown away you know it was incredible it's nice to be able to to focus on things and that we can do it in such a beautiful setting everybody's always helping everybody out or you know answering questions or so yeah I mean it's like a like a small family you're definitely being trained and showing what to do but you know by showing up and doing it every day you're putting putting it to work being being here and working here is it's it's a special place to be you know as a kid I loved playing with Legos and building houses of cards and things like that constantly drawing I had an excellent wood shop teacher in high school he really encouraged me to stick through the program they even made more classes for me and my family has a home remodeling business in Philadelphia so I would spend my summer jobs as a kid going there working with the Carpenters so I got to work with hand tools and learn the tricks of the trade After High School I went to college I studied Fine Art focusing in sculpture and painting after I graduated went back to work now in the real world you know banging nails and getting all kinds of demolition dust and debris on me and in my lungs and quickly you realize that I didn't want to do that started going door to door handing my resumes out my employer had a friend that knew of an opportunity here and I was hired as an apprentice woodworker and building restorationist seven years later here I am where I find the most meaning working here is their philosophy as a whole how they treat the Woodworkers how they treat the furniture and how important it is to make Exquisite work and the patients it requires to to accomplish that being here has reassured me this lifestyle of focus and calm and Precision is is out there it's attainable I've really found a great spot to be me to work with creative people skilled people kind people [Music] I worked in a couple of non-profits for about eight years and right when I turned 30 I decided that I was done with office work and quit and started going to school at Bucks County Community College which has a wonderful arts and woodworking program and from there I went to a school in Maine the center for furniture craftsmanship when I came back I ran into John Lutz our general manager and he told me they were hiring and it just kind of worked out where I was and in my new career path and what Nakashima was looking for and I really lucked out I have a job that is almost unimaginable to think of like when I was going to school and knowing about Nakashima and knowing that it was down the street from one of the schools I went to and accessible to me from Philadelphia never in my dreams would have been like oh yeah they hire people to build like they they hire people like me to build I think I've learned to slow down step back take a look at the piece be intentional with my decisions what really pulls me here is our approach the intention we put into each piece that drives us to make sure it's right [Music] thank you [Music] I'm from Ohio Northern Ohio and Lake Erie small town called Sandusky studied interior design undergrad architecture grad school and then I worked in offices for a while it wasn't for me started transitioning to the field I started doing woodworking art installations furniture making prior to coming here I was restoring historic structures up and down the East Coast for about three and a half years anything from a you know a lighthouse to a Church's uh arches over small towns things of that nature which was really really an experience that experience and then both Design Furniture art historic restoration a kind of it kind of all works here I feel very lucky to have like all of my past experiences kind of utilized in this environment here it's a place of patience it's very calm peaceful focused um and that's day to day also the continuation of what George started and being able to to do that to continue his work and then also to be trusted with his work by both Amira and Jonathan um that's that's an that's incredibly meaningful um probably more so than anything else and it's an honor bring a drawing for a king headboard this is this is an end matched headboard this is Mira's sketch here if you want to pin down to that this is American English Walnut so the end grain will be matching as opposed to the the Grain on the pre-edge and the sides we draw everything by hand the boards that I'm drawing are here there's one coming here initially and I still see it in those clients of ours or visitors that that uh their first time here there's this um they get quieter they walk slower um there's a sense of awe and and an astonishment uh especially when you open the pole barn and they get to see the wood that I do I get to relive that each time I think that that sense of uh excitement of beauty it's a place that allows you to take that that external Viewpoint and and kind of focus it inward that's good draw our Center Line now I'm rethinking the whole thing I've always been interested in Wood I was a little kid when I was I don't know maybe Junior no before that maybe sophomore year in high school I was really kind of narrowing in and uh my cousin who used to work for George Jimmy Radcliffe gave me one of George's books and I was like what who is this guy and Jimmy would always say hey you got to come to Nakashima you got to see it and as a kid and living in Abington I was too busy you know I was so into what I was doing in my wood I was like I'm not going to drive a New Hope or I'm not you know get my parents and around the same time um I saw eschrick and I saw the extra Museum and that's when I was like I want to be these dudes and then I ended up at RIT School of American Craftsman and I was not looking back I was going to be doing what George and nashrich kind of that was my inspiration the craft kind of environment and I ended up with Thomas Moser which was a great great environment and uh Tom and I uh just he was like my second dad he just we were it was just such a wonderful family run business Incredibly Close community and then uh my folks became ill and I had him really relocate in Philadelphia and uh um and then lo and behold I come to nakashimus and uh mirror and we're we had a few conversations and at that time she was like everybody's telling me to go CNC and I need to increase production I said Mira don't do any of that look what you have you know you have just do what you're doing and embrace the community kind of taking what I little the community and the craft pieces that I've always had in my life and just combining the two and then um six eight months later Miriam cause me to call and says how would you like to manage the company I'm gonna go you know when I first came on um just seeing the level of craft and doing it old school from the standpoint of pulling it all together from the logs to the lumber yard to Lumber into finding trees and Milling the slabs and knowing the slabs we want after we military we're not going to see that slab for three four years I mean it's just a fascinating long-term approach to a business structure versus calling a lumber yard and having it delivered we are so focused on the material total reverence for the material having lived in Maine for 18 years and building my own house and renovating a couple of old antique capes this was like a wow I get to do my woodworking I get to hang out in the community and I get to take care of buildings how much of what a great plan is that um but I it's I soon realized that I'd had no ability whatsoever to um understand uh preservation architecture from a high level I contacted University of Penn their architectural Department so we have a full preservation plan uh we now extended our relationship with Penn they're doing a full energy audit and our goal is to significantly reduce our carbon footprint we're going to be doing installing uh solar panels on the pole barn and we are moving to full solar we have a great group we know how to hire we know how to train we now over the course of the years we know how to preserve the buildings uh we have a full-time guy that's here all the time to Johnny Fresco to be able to take care of these buildings George designed and built these buildings on his own on a shoestring I think George was just so enjoying the moment you know he was this was fun this was this was a project and when you're a woodworker and you finish the project you want to move to the next thing on your bench there was only two people working in the office when I first started about 20 years ago exactly 20 years ago also my husband was also working in the office too but he worked also later he worked in the other department uh chair making chairs and other stuff the design I used to say that for what brings me here to find love so so this was the big change for me I lived in the cities the past and this small town New Hope was a big adjustment my first job was cleaning and mowing the lawn that's in a tractor we had to do everything and then now we have more people we have a bookkeeper we have general manager and then we do have also authentication um and archivist so my job is more focused on now on sales I really really like my day here every day uh working in the office and also interact with our clients from all over the world and they're the best you know I learned a lot from them I'm I'm in perfect place actually every day is so great [Music] this is a pretty one yeah and look at this did you see the way she I did see that yeah it must have been a hole where like where the leg was supposed to go it wasn't enough space to put it in yeah this is pretty too it's just plain black walnut it's nice it has Jerry used to call this highball coloring thank you my name is katsutoshi amagasu George was my great grandfather Mira is my grandmother Sumi and Rue are my parents and I'm here this is part of my work I tagged the pieces so these are some of our finished pieces some I just take the dimensions of the piece I'll classify the wood this one's obviously black walnut and then this one is yet to be priced I have to give them to Nana to price them and she's already signed this one so yeah oh I also have to take photos of them and put them in our database which is fun I would see people come in week after week and enjoy the property and I get to take them around and they you know see things that they've never seen before and their eyes swell up and they you know smile because it's just something that's completely brand new to them and I can also remember lots of family coming in from all over the world and having them here and experience something that I've experienced for my entire life and they see as something that's spectacular and brand new it's so fun to see I value nature quite a bit although I am sort of an indoor cat I've always been somebody that's realized the beauty in nature and as a Boy Scout I really liked it and I can actually remember when I was a kid at this Pond I would play with rocks and make little sculptures and stuff like that and just sit out and watch them as they tumbled with the water with your great grandfather I think I do I think we all communicate with him I remember um a few years ago it was his birthday we went down to the graveyard and said hi and uh I definitely could feel him and I I know he's watching and I I hope he's proud when I was younger I I couldn't believe that I had never met him because I could swear I could see his face in my memory I've been doing woodworking you know in school since about the third grade and I've always enjoyed that it was always fun to create for me and so working in the shop it's pretty rewarding the most meaningful part of working here for me it's always been interacting with people my mom is obviously sales and she's dealt with literally every customer that's coming through here for quite a while and through that I've been able to interact with a lot of cool people and um telling them about my slice of the planet is kind of fun [Music] before I moved to the states I lived in France for a few years and I'd just gone with my son who is in a stroller to the museum will say and was looking at their their Art Nouveau rooms that they had and whilst walking back to my metro station I was walking on the Left Bank and in the furniture store very upmarket store there was this beautiful table sitting in the window and I stopped and I tried to go in and was stopped by a very officious Parisian who said I couldn't go in with my son so I was asking him in my in my very bad French about the table and he he wrote down a name on a poster George Nakashima so after that I had to go and uh and research and find out more about it so learned a little about about George Nakashima and his work and have always loved it and loved the aesthetic and then lo and behold we get transferred to the states and I end up just down the road which was interesting for me so you can fast forward in the 20 20 years kids are growing I'm working working in a job that I was very very happy in and everyone gets these uh emails you know so-and-so's looking for a bookkeeper and most of the time I just delete delete delete because um I was happy where I was and then one day in the subject line of one of these LinkedIn emails was George and akashima Woodworkers and I think are hyperventilated for about half an hour and then answer the email it's wonderful working with so many creative people bookkeeping I've always said is is can be very dry and it's very dependent on the business you're working in it's like active history I don't know if that makes sense it's uh being able to see the process of the creation and seeing the people working on the furniture industry and the joy of people coming to collect what what they've been so involved in the creation of is is wonderful it gives meaning interest to the job I grew up in Yardley just south of here and my parents who were very frugal simple Pennsylvania Germans would occasionally as we drove by on aquatong road would go oh that's nakashima's where they make the really expensive furniture I wish they were customers of Georgia back then but they weren't after various Adventures I moved back to this area I would stop by the studio on their you know Saturday afternoon open hours between 1 and 4 30 and I've always admired the work due to George's success and worldwide popularity there are lots of people copying George's work Kevin Nakashima came up with a funny term he called a knockoffishimas my advice to everybody is don't buy a piece unless it comes with the original paperwork which was given to the original client or you have a copy of the original order card on letterhead from us proving that it was made here and that's one thing that makes this place really unique is that it's more small enough that we get to know the customers one-on-one they work with Mira and our design team if they need authentication Services they know they work with the people here in the office one of the great things about working here you're doing something new every day something different every day so you never know who you're going to meet you never know when you're going to find another piece that's going to pop up on the secondary Market you know something really beautiful that you didn't know about I'm just always amazed by what George was able to accomplish and I'm always disappointed I never got a chance to meet them in person [Music] foreign of Kevin in 2020 he was the last resident of the family house it's been my responsibility to document the things in the house the documents the belongings something that probably will take a long time Mira and I are working slowly to uncover things you don't want to disturb things too much there's a lot in the files and the things that they collected and the places they visited it's really a treasure hunt every single day working with an archivist we need to make sure that we're following all the right procedures and policies to make sure that we don't carelessly toss something we have a whole file on the Family's experiences in Minidoka in the Japanese internment camps there are files that explain how this particular site was built over the decades so there's a lot of really valuable information well every day I walk in here I feel like I bow my head to the Legacy here the family's spirit and presence is everywhere in the house I am surrounded by incredible beauty and peace I work specifically for the Nakashima foundation for peace and it is the foundation's mission to preserve the Historic Site but also to preserve the legacy of George and Meera so I feel it's it's my job and my honor to have some impact on how we move forward first came with uh my father who is an architect practicing in Philadelphia and was bringing the family out to Bucks County actually my parents bought an old barn along this same Ridge about a mile to the West so coming out to look at the property we stopped to see what George was all about and that was my first visit and then coming back later to work in the area and uh was working in landscaping and I was laid off for the winter and knocked on the door asked if I could work and George said he can start in two weeks so that was almost 50 years ago still here you know from my experience nakashima's Woodworkers grew out of the ashes of World War II my mentors here we're all from cultures that suffered during the war and personally they suffered George was a as a Japanese American was interned in a concentration camp Adam martini of German Heritage was in a concentration camp after the war Mario Joya was in a concentration camp as an Italian in Yugoslavia so they were in a sense all refugees coming to New Hope George would often say he felt like a peasant he wanted to live like a peasant close to the Earth keeping things simple Ernest Daily Bread all three of them had a deep Catholic faith and bonded here and work on the basis of that faith so that was a great insight for me to see how from very difficult situations you can not only recover your life but you can thrive in a whole new situation George partly because he is Japanese and Japanese have an understanding of Spirits in nature around them specifically in wood Japan traditionally being a wood culture but George had this affinity for trees and seeing the Divine quality in trees this dialogue that was established between the human spirit in the spirit in the tree be such the spirit of a man would come out to engage the tree and in this dialogue you're set free in a sense from your your Duality because it's not you and the tree is object it's you as spirit and tree as Spirit which becomes your union the tree then becomes a mirror of your own soul and you bypass through the craft your own conceptual perspective so that you you Lose Yourself and then find yourself because of the circular motion of your spirit contacting the tree and the spirit of the tree coming back to you and hopefully the record of this encounter is reflected in the peace that's created there were so many so-called unknown craftsmen who worked with my father and made his work possible I mean he wouldn't have gotten anywhere without the men who worked with him in the beginning it was a one-man Workshop because he just started off on his own and then as time went on he gathered more and more people I was an only child until I was about 13. so the fellows in the shop were my best friends and uh well I don't know if they were friends or not I used to pester them the shop was at the house so I go visit and see what they were up to and and pester them a little bit and then in the summertime my mother would put me to work and make me serve them Kool-Aid in you know because it was so hot in the afternoon so we take a Kool-Aid break and that was my job and Bob Lovett was one of our early employees he's one of the people who helped my father build almost every single building on the property he was uh wonderful Craftsman he had this Quaker attitude he didn't work very quickly and if you asked him a question he would answer it at Great length as to you know how the best way to do things were and and why you did things that way and he was he was a wonderful just sort of calming uh employee to have around and he he worked on the buildings and then towards the end of his life he worked in the shop and he was an excellent cabinet maker not everybody can make cabinets but he was really good at it I guess that's partly because he was used to building buildings and all the joints had to fit properly Adam Martini is one of those refugees from Austria who had been trained in Austria before he came and he was it was in the workshop for a while he could make basically anything in the shop but my father put him in the uh the chair Department because he was really fast and very accurate he trained my husband John as John may have mentioned and he trained a lot of other people too and Adam was instrumental in making the first conoy chair it was an ongoing collaborative process and when my father passed away in 1990 it was Adam and Jerry and sometimes I don't remember if Mario was still around or not but I had to consult with them many many times when I was doing drawings because I didn't know the construction details the droids were on little five by seven sheets of paper with the freeform uh sort of perspective of what this piece of furniture was supposed to be and as time went on because he sent me to architectural school I said I think you need to put some more details on the drawings because that worked when he was there there weren't too many employees there weren't a whole lot of pieces going through and he was in the shop all day you know every day so he could tell them what to do next when they got to a certain point I thought it would be better to to at least specify some of the dimensions and then if we needed to we could we could change them as on the beds as necessary John Lutz our manager came in he wanted us to stay a very craftsmanly sort of workshop and in order to do that you had to have employees who were dedicated to the draft and didn't want to go into mass production and it's been a wonderful transition to this collaborative ideal in the workshop each person who's come in has had their their own particular skills which they've added to are our knowledge it's so exciting just to watch this wood come to life with each coat of oil and that's that's one of the beautiful things about an oil finish too is it penetrates the the wood and you get to see deeper and deeper into the life of this tree as the finishing process goes on I hope that you will appreciate your furniture uh more by knowing what went into it and knowing the people whose Heart and souls and lives went into making this furniture it's the life of the tree for sure and it's my my dad's guiding hand for sure but it's also the hands of all the workers who've been with us who made it possible thank you [Music]

Channel: George Nakashima Woodworkers

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Id: 6CHlm9Xc8yY

Length: 46min 27sec (2787 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 11 2023