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| Antiques & Collectibles |
Out of the Woods
Catherine Bindman
05/03/2004
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In addition to creating designs for such furniture companies as H.G.
Knoll in New York (between 1943 and 1954) and for Widdicomb-Mueller of Grand
Rapids, Mich., (1958 to the early 1960s), his major works included interiors for
Columbia University, Mount Holyoke College and International Paper. His most
important single commission, however, was for Governor Nelson Rockefeller. In
1973 and 1974, Nakashima produced more than 200 pieces for Rockefeller’s home
in Tarrytown, N.Y. The furniture was intended to complement the Asian
sensibility of the house, designed by a Japanese architect friend of
Nakashima’s.
 | | This 1989 sliding door cabinet, with rosewood butterflies and grilled pandanus
cloth sliding doors, was one of Nakashima’s last pieces; he died the following
year. |
Late in his life, the designer established the Nakashima
Foundation for Peace, creating a series of peace altars, with one intended for
each continent of the world: The first donated peace altar was dedicated in 1986
at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York; another was installed in
Auroville, India, in 1996; and a third in the Russian Academy of Arts in Moscow
in 2001.
A significant factor in Nakashima’s recent popularity is, of course,
marketing savvy; auction house specialists clearly have much to gain from
promoting an American master whom for a long time was seen as more of a
craftsman than a modernist designer and only recently began commanding very high
market prices. His pieces are considered one-of-a-kind in the sense that each
was individually made and each is a little bit different—although he produced
many series of pieces that employed a modernist design aesthetic, which were all
but standardized and were made using mechanical processes to one degree or
another.
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