In 1931, when Nakashima began his professional life as [...] Click here to continue reading.]]> George Nakashima (1905-1990)

George Nakashima was born in Spokane, Washington in 1905, the son of Japanese immigrants. His educational pursuits began in the 1920′s at the University of Washington, and from there he studied in Paris at the Ecole Americaine des Beaux Arts and ultimately graduated from MIT with an MA in Architecture in 1930. He also learned traditional woodworking in Japan and India.

In 1931, when Nakashima began his professional life as an architectural designer, he worked for the Long Island State Parks and the New York State Government. In 1933 he traveled to Japan and then India where Antonin Raymond influenced both his work and philosophy. In the early 1940′s he moved back to Seattle and started a furniture workshop and designing interiors. Here he established his professional aesthetic and produced works inspired by the simplicity and methods of the Shaker furniture makers which established him as a known name in the West Coast design community. Nakashima’s writings as well as some of his design work began to appear in Arts & Architecture and other publications.

During World War II, Nakashima, his wife Marion and daughter Mira, who was only 6 weeks old, were sent to an Idaho internment camp. There Nakashima was trained on salvaged wood by a master Japanese carpenter. Working with unfinished natural wood gave Nakashima an immense well of inspiration and he wrote that, “in dealing with solid wood almost each piece becomes a personal problem and the nature of each slab is used to its fullest capacity.” The Nakashima family was released from the internment camp in 1943 through the sponsorship of George’s associate, Antonin Raymond. Raymond had returned to America and was living in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where the Nakashima family joined him and established a studio.

George Nakashima’s style, which remained relatively constant throughout his career, was seen as an extension of the Arts and Crafts movement in the way it valued craftsmanship. His designs reflect the earliest American furniture in their economy of means and their respect for the unique qualities of each wood. Nakashima believed that his work was “not only a creative force, but a moral idea.”

Nakashima’s furniture design series of 1946 for Knoll was unique in that it often left the natural edge of the wood as part of the finished piece. His unique tables, like the Slab Coffee Table were very successful commercially, but Nakashima maintained the production rights and sold the same pieces from his own shop. During this period he also produced a series of chairs (Settee, No Arms, and Mira) which often revealed the natural knots in the wood, and had a more finished quality than his tables. In 1957 the Widdicomb-Mueller company released his classic Origins line of furniture, which was followed by the Conoid series of furniture, frames and room dividers. In 1973 Nakashima received his largest single commission, to create over 200 pieces for Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller’s home in Tarrytown, New York. The estate, designed by a Japanese architect from Nakashima’s Raymond days, called for elegant but durable pieces with an eastern sensibility. This series was called Greenrock, the name of Rockefeller’s estate. In 1983 he designed the massive “Altar of Peace” installed in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.

George Nakashima died in 1990. His daughter, architect/craftsman Mira Nakashima-Yarnall, continues to direct the Nakashima Studio in New Hope and to develop new pieces of her own.

George Nakashima & his Furniture Designs

-By p4A Contributing Editor Susan Cramer.

George Nakashima founded his still extant studio in the 1940s and produced popular handmade furniture until his death in 1990. His studio pieces as well as lines designed for Knoll International and the Widdicomb Company have a strong following. Nakashima’s immersion in his and other cultures brought about his designs for furniture deeply rooted in history, architecture, and nature.

George Nakashima Biography
George Nakashima (1905-1990) was born in Spokane, Washington where he spent his boyhood hiking and camping in the rugged coastal mountains near his home. In 1939, he earned a bachelor’s degree of arts in Architecture, and was accepted into the post-graduate program in architecture at Harvard University. After a brief period there, he transferred to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), where he earned a master’s degree in 1930. Nakashima spent the next few years working for the Long Island State Park Commission, but by 1933, the 28 year old architect would begin an almost decade-long spiritual journey that would take him to the world’s most beautiful locations, and through his exposure to the best in traditional art and culture and cutting edge architecture, inform the aesthetic truths that would influence his work for the rest of his life.

Nakashima in Japan, India and China
During his time in Paris, Nakashima began questioning his commitment to architecture, deciding that its reliance on technology and rigid principles was not for him. Leaving Paris, he traveled to Japan where he spent his days immersed in the intricacies of Japanese culture and society. His background in architecture led him to an appreciation for the Japanese sensibility in architecture and art, especially the technique use by Japanese craftsmen in the blending of traditional and modern forms; the merging of old and new. This synthesis of traditional woodworking techniques with modern forms would inform Nakashima’s work for the rest of his career. After visits to China and a stay in an Ashram in Pondicherry, India, George Nakashima returned to the United States in 1941 where he would begin creating the furniture that is still popular today.

George Nakashima & the War Years (1941-43)
A first generation American, Nakashima was interned with his wife, Marian in a relocation camp in Hunt Idaho from 1941-1943. During his internment, he met and worked with a furniture maker who was skilled in the methods of traditional woodworking who taught him the means and methods of woodworking by hand. In 1943, George and his wife were sponsored by a past employer, and were released from the camp.

George Nakashima’s Furniture Studio
His journey around the globe along with his forced confinement finally brought him to the work he would do happily and successfully for the rest of his life-designing and building high quality hand crafted modern furniture with deep traditional roots. Nakashima’s earliest designs were inspired by iconic Colonial American furniture. Windsor chairs, harvest tables, and plank cupboards were simplified, stripped of ornament, and executed in ways in which the natural beauty and imperfections of the wood was allowed to shine.

A collaboration with furniture manufacturer Knoll International brought his work to the attention of architects and designers, and brought in enough capital to expand his studio in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and embark on his own projects. His collaboration with The Widdicomb Furniture Company produced mass-marketed, hard edged versions of his designs, and introduced his work to mainstream, middle-class America. In 1961, he introduced the Conoid Group which continues to be the Studio’s biggest seller.

George Nakashima, Mira Nakashima, & Nelson Rockefeller
In 1973, Nakashima won the commission to create the furniture for the New York Governor’s residence in Tarrytown, New York. The house perched high above the Hudson River was designed in a distinctively Japanese style. Nakashima produced hundreds of pieces for the house including variations on some of his existing designs. Also in the 1970s, George’s Harvard-trained daughter, Mira joined the studio, which still produces Nakashima designs exactly the same way George did.

Reference: Rago, David & Sollo, John, Collecting Modern: A Guide to Midcentury Studio Furniture & Ceramics, Gibbs Smith c2001.

Quoting from the Sotheby’s press release for this sale:

This exceptional collection was assembled by Takeo Horiuchi, a real estate magnate and prominent collector with a passionate interest in the Japanese influence on Western art around 1900. Horiuchi teamed up with [...] Click here to continue reading.]]> Garden Museum Collection of Art Nouveau Masterpieces

This sale comprises 130 lots of Art Nouveau masterpieces by Emile Galle, Louis Majorelle and Rene Lalique formerly in the Garden Museum, Nagoya, Japan.

Quoting from the Sotheby’s press release for this sale:

This exceptional collection was assembled by Takeo Horiuchi, a real estate magnate and prominent collector with a passionate interest in the Japanese influence on Western art around 1900. Horiuchi teamed up with the decorative arts specialist Alastair Duncan to track down magnificent works and build up the world’s most important Art Nouveau collection: The Louis C. Tiffany Garden Museum Collection.

The museum was popular for many years but, following the tsunami and Fukushima catastrophe in 2011, Takeo Horiuchi decided to sell his collection to an American amateur who, in turn, has asked Sotheby’s France to offer the French and European items at auction.

The collection offers precious evidence of late 19th century European enthusiasm for Japonisme, a faraway source of renewed Nature-based inspiration for European decorative arts that also offered innovative techniques and formal solutions. The presence of several Art Deco items in the collection reflects the fact that this Asian influence continued into the 1920s.

The collection reflects the versatility of several major early 20th century French artists, like Louis Majorelle, whose sinuous furniture was especially suited to plant and leaf motifs; the cultured Emile Galle, the movement’s undisputed frontrunner, who imbued objects with a spiritual meaning and sometimes adding contemporary poetry as a decorative features; and Rene Lalique whose jewelry marked a total break with the decorative repertoire of the time.

Ingie and Ted’s love of American history was shared with their children. There is not a plantation or historical monument between Cleveland and Florida that the family did not visit while Ingie delivered a [...] Click here to continue reading.]]>

The late Angela McCrory Kilroy, “Ingie”, and Edward A.,”Ted”, Kilroy of Shaker Heights, Ohio, pursued their passion for collecting American Decorative Arts throughout their 60 years of marriage. It was Ingie’s avocation and Ted gave her his unwavering support.

Ingie and Ted’s love of American history was shared with their children. There is not a plantation or historical monument between Cleveland and Florida that the family did not visit while Ingie delivered a riveting history lesson. As Harold Sack states in his book, American Treasure Hunt: The Legacy of Israel Sack, “Ingie has probably read every book and catalogue extant on the subject of early Americana.” Harold was their mentor, guide and friend.

Over decades of collecting, Ingie became an expert in her own right and was respected in the field of American Decorative Arts. Ingie served on the Executive Committee of the Friends of American Arts at Yale and the Governing Board of the Yale University Art Gallery. Ingie was a member of the Women’s Council of The Cleveland Museum of Art since 1971. She was a Trustee from 1978 to 2000 and a Life Trustee from 2000 until her death. Ingie and Ted built one of the finest private collections of Americana in the country and made many close friends along the way. They will be missed by the American Decorative Arts community.

Extracted from Sotheby’s catalogue notice.

One [...] Click here to continue reading.]]> Zoar

In the 1810s, a group of German religious separatists left Wurttemberg in what is now southwestern Germany, after several decades of separation from the primary church in the region, the Lutheran Church. After years of persecution and oppression which included imprisonment and property seizures, the separatists, under the leadership of Joseph Bimeler (sometimes Baumeler), decided to flee to the United States in the hopes that they could establish a new community there.

One can only imagine how uncertain things were for them, a group of nearly 200 native Germans, when they arrived in Philadelphia as immigrants in dire financial straits, but fortunately, they gained the attention of the Society of Friends, Philadelphia’s large Quaker population, and before long, Quakers had helped them to find jobs and some stability. After a time, they decided to relocate to eastern Ohio, at which point the Quakers loaned them money to purchase the land they found – 5,500 acres in Tuscarawas County.

A few members of the group headed west in the fall of 1817, where they began building before weathering their first Ohio winter, and the remaining members of the group joined them in the spring of 1818. They would name their community Zoar from the biblical story of Lot, who fled to Zoar from Sodom in Genesis, and they would become known as Zoarites.

The community became so tightly knit not by original intent but by necessity. The first few years of the settlement were very rough, so in the spring of 1819, the residents formalized what had essentially become a commune already by creating the Society of Separatists of Zoar and turning all property over to the Society. (Women were also permitted to sign, to hold office and to vote.) Over the next fifteen years, the arrangements would be further formalized.

Zoarites would eventually be self-reliant and prosperous. In addition to the community’s agricultural production, they would also operate mills and foundries, manufacture textiles and wagons, and run a variety of stores, supplying the community’s needs and selling any surplus goods to those beyond the community. They would later sign on to build a portion of the Ohio and Erie Canal, which would help pay off the last of the loans for the property and would bring profits from the canal boats they owned and operated as well as from the increased traffic in the vicinity of Zoar.

By the second half of the 19th century, communal spirit in Zoar began to decline. Joseph Bimeler died, prosperity had brought the outside world closer, and younger members, who had never experienced the religious persecution in Europe or the hardship and sacrifice of the early settlement, were less invested and connected. By 1898, the community voted to dissolve the society and divide up the property and assets, but Zoar continues to exist as a village and today several of the society’s original buildings have been restored and gathered into an historic site for visitors.

A carved schrank, Zoar, Tuscarawas County, Ohio, mid 19th century, cherry, walnut, and poplar. (p4A item # E8977195)

A number of artifacts of the early settlement still survive, primarily furniture with Empire and Biedermeier influences, but other items like coverlets and earthenware pottery occasionally turn up as well. (Furniture pieces are frequently seen with diamond panels, fairly typical of Midwestern Germanic furniture, but especially so of Zoar furniture.) Although their popularity is rather regional, Zoar-related objects are quite sought after, both by collectors who still live in Zoar and have an interest in local items and by collectors of Midwestern material. Provenance often makes firm attributions, but as there were a number of Germanic separatist communities throughout the Midwest, particularly in Ohio and Indiana, all heavily influenced and deeply rooted in Germanic craft traditions, further scholarship is necessary to draw clearer distinctions between the communities’ wares.

1800s Sea Captain’s Life Told Through Collection

At 6 foot, 4 inches tall and “powerfully built” Capt. Hall Jackson Tibbits would brook no foolishness.

After his “religious principles” were violated by passengers dancing on [...] Click here to continue reading.]]> Captain Hall J. Tibbits (American, 1797 to 1872)

This article about the life and career of Captain Tibbits by Eric C. Rodenberg appeared on the 4 November 2013 front page of Antique Week’s National Section. Used by permission. http://www.antiqueweek.com.

1800s Sea Captain’s Life Told Through Collection

At 6 foot, 4 inches tall and “powerfully built” Capt. Hall Jackson Tibbits would brook no foolishness.

After a trip around Cape Horn, from New York to San Francisco soured and passengers began to complain, he threatened to fire the ship’s powder magazine and “blow it all to hell.”

Characterized by his detractors as “habitually intoxicated and mentally deranged,” the Captain suffered few complaints from passengers or crew.

After sending a “disease-racked” sailor aloft to the crow’s nest during a gale, a passenger idly commented that it was a wonder the sailor ever survived. “Aye,” said Capt. Tibbits. “I never have sick crewmen for long.”

Although Tibbits was normally a China trades shipper, the gold strike in California in 1849, proved to be a boon to business. And Capt. Tibbits was all about business.

In January of that year, the owners of the 532-ton square rigger Pacific, Tibbits and Frederick Griffing, advertised for passengers to make the “trip around the Horn,” leaving New York and arriving in San Francisco. It was a perilous three-to six-month journey, with tempestuous storms and gales rounding The Horn of South America, piracy and uncertainties at every port.

However, the genial Captain assured his first-class passengers that for $300, he would provide an ample table, comfortable “staterooms” and superlative service.”

However, Tibbits could not resist the temptation of “overbooking” the passage, particularly after he sold officials from the New England Mining and Trading Co. a block of staterooms for $275 each. Supposedly the passage was limited to 50 staterooms; however, 72 first-class tickets were sold, according to an account in Forty-Niners ‘Round the Horn by Charles R. Schultz.

Once the passengers learned they had been hoodwinked, they filed a lawsuit. But, Capt. Tibbets – not to be dry-docked by any lawyer – quietly slipped the Pacific out of New York in the late afternoon “to escape any further problems with the lawsuit.”

Many of cash-paying customers were left ashore, helplessly jumping and screaming. In the end, those left on land would count themselves fortunate.

“The first disillusionment experienced by the passengers aboard the Pacific was the attitude of one Capt. Tibbets, who trod the quarterdeck,” according to an account published in the Oakland Tribune. “The jovial mariner who previously extolled the service of his craft, the bounty of its table and the conveniences of travel aboard the ship, proved a relentless tyrant as soon as land was left behind.

“Thirty days out of New York, the passengers were miserable with seasickness and cold. Snow confined them in verminous quarters. The food consisted of raw mush, preserved meats, dubbed ‘old junk,’ and beans. Some of the passengers asked why pickles and vegetables were not served with meals, and the Captain blandly explained these items as being saved against the time when the passengers developed scurvy.”

Once the ship made port in Rio de Janerio, the passengers scurried to the U.S. Consulate with their allegations of cruel and inhumane treatment. Despite protesting vigorously against what he characterized as “the abuse of authority and the outrages committed upon me individually,” Tibbits was relieved of duty by the American Consul. Another captain was appointed to commandeer the ship the remainder of the journey. Tibbits was left aground in Brazil, according to a 1958 account by maritime historian W.Z. Gardner, and had to make his own way to San Francisco to re-claim his ship.

Although the debacle of the Pacific during his latter years of command left a black mark on the Captain’s legacy, he was widely regarded among his peers as a loyal old salt with an intimate knowledge of the seas.

Despite tyrannical tendencies, Capt. Tibbits was a true “son of the sea.” He went to sea young, with his father who captained a three-masted square-rigger running the China trade route from New York to Canton.

By the time of his father’s death, the 24-year-old Tibbits was one of the youngest shipmasters in the China trade. “Young Hall was physically strong, mentally alert and keenly interested in mastering the mysteries of navigation,” Gardner wrote.

During the ensuing years, Tibbits would own and command several clipper ships, trading tea and silk on a trade route between America, China and South America. He bought the Baltimore clipper ship, Architect, and after sailing it around the Horn discovered “she was too cranky and hard to handle,” according to son, George’s account, recorded by Gardner. In 1854, he sold the ship in Hong Kong, “at a considerable financial loss.” The favorite of the Captain’s ships was the Southerner, a three-masted, 670 ton ship which initially carried ten guns to discourage piracy. Built in 1834 in the shipyards of New York, she responded to the Captain’s subtle and learned touch until retiring in 1851.

But, the Southerner did not always carry Tibbits to “fair seas.”

Trade with the Far Eastern Empire was lucrative in the era of 1830-1860, with Chinese furniture, silk and tea in high demand in the West. But the “price” was to be paid; engaging in the China trade was not for the faint-hearted. Trade and diplomatic relations between the Chinese and the West were fragile at best; at the worse, culminating in the Opium Wars (1839-1842 and 1857-1858).

In his latter years, his son George explained his father’s sea-born skill with a simple statement: “You have to have a ‘sense of the sea and of the sky.’ The Captain could tell a storm was coming three days in advance.”

After standing at the helm of the large three-masted square rigged ships of the high seas since 1821, the Captain – as many old salts – began to yearn for a more tranquil life in the country. In 1852, not quite the Ancient Mariner at 55 years old, the Captain bought a 127-acre farm on Sands Point, Long Island. Initially built by Capt. John Sands in the early 1700s, the house ultimately was expanded to 24 rooms. Nestled on the Atlantic shore, one of the Captain’s first projects was construction of a 90-foot porch fronting the ocean. During the next 20 years, Capt. Tibbits paced the porch, often posting himself behind a 3-foot-long telescope (marked Dolland, London, Day or Night) keeping vigil on his sea. When he moved into the old house, Tibbits brought with him an extensive collection of curios and paintings from his trips to China. He had a library full of sea-related literature and, as additional comfort, scattered around him the compass, chronometer, telescopes and barometer that had helped him navigate the globe for three decades. He also placed in his library a miniature folding writing desk, he used at sea, in addition to a large mahogany settee jettisoned from his quarters in the Southerner. Especially made to accommodate his large frame, the settee measured seven feet. Ship models made for him by crew members surrounded his home, in addition to several examples of exquisite Chinese craftsmanship in silk and ivory gathered during his travels. He also retained several antiques passed down through his family.

In 1872, the Captain died. His son, George, came from San Francisco to be with his mother. The home remained in the family until the spring of 1959 when it was sold. Prior to selling the home, all of Capt. Tibbit’s China Trade and nautical memorabilia were moved to a descendant’s home and large barn in Wading River, New York. There, it has remained for more than 50 years.

When Ron Pook, founder and owner of Pook and Pook Auctioneers and Appraisers come upon the China Trade trove, he was, at the least, stunned. “It was like stumbling onto a big time capsule; material piled up and virtually untouched for 150 years,” he said. “It’s unbelievable. This is the most important China Trade collection in existence. There hasn’t been one like it and, I’ll guarantee you, there won’t be another.” [It includes] the old nautical devices, Chinese art, the porcelain, ivory, sailors’ scrimshaw work, old leather-and-brass-tacked sea trunks (one with the name, Capt. Hall J. Tibbit), ship models, lacquered-veneer furniture – “it’s all there,” Pook said. Included among the items for sale are a portrait of the Captain and a painting of his favorite clipper, Southerner. Despite their age, both look as if they’re ready to sail again.

Information courtesy of Pook & Pook, Inc., January 2014.

An ancient [...] Click here to continue reading.]]> The Sarcophagus in Decorative Arts

Derived from the Greek sarx, meaning flesh, and phagein, meaning eat, a sarcophagus is, essentially, a container for a body, much like a coffin or casket. Historically, sarcophagi were typically made of stone (though sometimes of other materials, such as wood or metal), with a relief-carved or pediment top, and designed to be above ground, and have been used by many cultures since ancient times.

An ancient Egyptian miniature bronze sarcophagus

(p4A item # D9789825)

In the early modern era, the sarcophagus shape began infiltrating the decorative arts, appearing as a design element in pieces of furniture, or contributing its entire form to smaller objects. The most common places to find the sarcophagus shape are on the pediments of sophisticated case furniture, most notably clocks, and in tea caddies, which from the late eighteenth through the end of the nineteenth century, often drew their inspiration from sarcophagi, even if stylized.

Boston Queen Anne tall case clock with a pediment in the shape of a sarcophagus

(p4A item # E8909171)

Victorian tea made of sharkskin (called shagreen) and in the form of a sarcophagus

(p4A item # D9814453)

It is difficult to generalize about the shape that a sarcophagus takes when it is integrated into decorative arts objects. The variety of sarcophagi-inspired objects is as diverse as the ancient sarcophagi themselves. From subtle appearances, such as on the bases of this pair of French bronze girandoles…

A pair of French Renaissance Revival bronze girandoles
(p4A item # D9668672)

and lid of this American Victorian sewing table…

Victorian Rococo Revival rosewood sewing stand by Mitchell and Rammelsburg
(p4A item # D9837246)

to overt adaptations, such as this English cellarette…

An English Regency mahogany cellarette

(p4A item # E8929234)

and tea caddy…

English Regency mahogany tea caddy with ebonized handles

(p4A item # D9661450)

even to objects seemingly modeled after real sarcophagi, such as this Continental bronze inkstand.

Late 19th-century Continental bronze inkwell

(p4A item # E8948126)