Photo&Styling : Mitsuo Suma (LICHT gallery)
Do you know George Nakashima , a woodworker? He is a master builder who aspired to architecture and left great footprints along with other geniuses of his time such as Le Corbusier, A. Raymond, Maekawa Kunio, Yoshimura Junzo, and many others.
The year 2020 will mark the 30th anniversary of his death, and an exhibition was planned for last year to commemorate the 30th anniversary of George Nakashima's death, but due to the new coronavirus, the announcement was delayed until this year.
After Nakashima's death, Nakashima Design furniture continues to be made at two locations: in New Hope, New Hope, USA, where his daughter, Mira Nakashima, has taken over the Nakashima Design studio, and at Sakura Seisakusho in Takamatsu, Shikoku, Japan.
In this exhibition, the rosewood glass seat chair, one of the pieces designed by Nakashima for the National Institute of Design (NID) in India and produced in India from the late 1960s to the 1970s, has been specially reissued by "Sakura Seisakusho" and is on display for sale in limited quantities.
. The following is a comment from Kosuke Nagami, the president of Sakura Seisakusho.
The National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India, (NID), was established in 1961 by the Government of India with the support of the Ford Foundation and the Sarabhais on the recommendation of Charles and Ray Eames. Nakashima came to Japan in 1964 on his way back to Japan and stayed there for two weeks to begin teaching design. Nakashima came to Japan in 1964, and on his way back to Japan, he visited India and stayed there for two weeks to teach Nakashima's designs. Now, half a century later, one of these chairs, the "Glass Seat Chair," is being reissued in the same Indian rosewood as at that time. However, this wood is very rare and difficult to obtain, so please understand that this is a limited edition.
This event is a must-see for interior designers and furniture lovers alike, and runs through Sunday, August 1.
Special exhibition on the 30th anniversary of the death of George Nakashima
Dates: July 24, 2021 (Sat) - August 1, 2021 (Sun) ( )
Hours: 13:00-18:00 *Open daily during the exhibition period
Venue: LICHT
Address: 2F, 3-18-10 Aobadai, Meguro-ku, Tokyo
Phone: 03 6452 5840
George Nakashima / George Nakashima (1905-1990)
With an interest in architecture, he majored in forestry at the University of Washington, but switched to architecture and transferred from Harvard Graduate School of Design to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a Master of Architecture. After working as an architectural designer, he embarked on a wandering journey around the world. During a one-year stay in Paris, he visited the site of Le Corbusier's Swiss Pavilion. Then, in 1934, before the war, he came to Japan and worked at the desk with Kunio Maekawa, Junzo Yoshimura, and others under A. Raymond. Later, he pursued the limits of creativity in architecture, the pursuit of integrated expression, and the ultimate in self-consciousness, and ended up with a vocation as a wood craftsman, a furniture maker who faces the unspeakable nature of wood and reads the heart of the tree.
Source: Work of wood, by Shinichi Nagami
