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| Antiques & Collectibles |
Out of the Woods
Catherine Bindman
05/03/2004
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Demand for the furniture of Japanese American designer and craftsman George
Nakashima (1905-1990) appears to have reached a level bordering on frenzy in the
past five years or so. “The market has really exploded,” says Richard Wright, of
Wright, a Chicago auction house that has been dealing in Nakashima’s work for
the last decade. “Until five years ago,” he says, “the Nakashima market hadn’t
really popped. Since then, prices have gone up four times.” Top Nakashima dealer
Robert Aibel, of Moderne Gallery in Philadelphia, agrees: “Today the furniture
of George Nakashima is one of the most important and growing vintage markets in
the U.S.”
 | | This unique bench by George Nakashima, was made in 1985 by special
commission. |
While Aibel’s first show of Nakashima’s work in 1992, and another
in 1994, seem to have increased the designer’s public visibility, the most
radical shift in the market, he says, came after the 1998 exhibition he
organized with Nakashima’s daughter, Mira Nakashima-Yarnall, titled The
Nakashima Tradition: Origins and Continuity. It was then that his existing
clients—collectors primarily interested in mid-century design of one kind or
another—began to face competition from “people in the media, movie stars and
musicians” as well as those furnishing homes designed by high-end architects,
and buyers of modern and contemporary art. Indeed, recent purchasers of
Nakashima’s unique furniture pieces have included such celebrities as Julianne
Moore, Rita Wilson, Brad Pitt, Diana Krall and Elvis Costello, Steven Spielberg,
Steve Jobs, Peter Brandt and Diane von Furstenberg.
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