5 Features That Make a Nakashima Coffee Table So Memorable

Do you recognize a George Nakashima coffee table when you see it? Are you sure?

As the father of the American Studio Craft Movement, Nakashima is commonly copied. A recent global Nakashima’s surge in demand for live-edge wood furniture only reinforces the legacy of Nakashima’s iconic style.

Here are five features that make tables so unique and memorable.

1. Perfect Imperfections

Nakashima found inspiration from traveling the world in the 1930s and ‘40s and revered the natural beauty of imperfect materials. He carefully hand-selected imperfect, unsalable logs, rough scraps and offcuts that would have otherwise been discarded due to their knots and burls.

Using painstaking woodworking techniques, he refined these boards into astoundingly beautiful furniture. His pieces display characteristic oddities, elegance, charm, and timelessness. Each Nakashima coffee table is a unique original that can never be replicated.

Don’t be fooled by today’s mass-manufactured wood and live-edge tables. Although they might be beautiful in their own ways, these newly produced pieces are mere shadows of the classic Nakashima style.

2. The Nakashima Joint

Many Nakashima coffee tables have his namesake joint style. Known as a butterfly , bow tie , Dutchman , or dovetail key, it’s a type of inlaid joinery that brings together two disparate pieces of wood.

To create the joint, Nakashima cut a bow tie shape into the area where two pieces of wood were to be joined, then inlaid a piece of identically-shaped, contrasting wood into the space. This type of joint firmly connects two pieces while creating an aesthetically rich, butterfly shape. It was also used to help prevent natural cracks and fissures from opening further or spreading in the boards. Sometimes, butterflies weren’t necessary, yet Nakashima used them to enhance the compositional interest of his design. These joints were always made of wood, most commonly with East Indian rosewood

3. Modernist Influences

Look closely at a Nakashima coffee table and you’ll see some classic signs of modernism: functionality, sleek lines, and minimal ornamentation.

Nakashima’s modernist influence extended beyond his designs and into his personal belief system. During a 1937 trip to India, Nakashima with Antonin Raymond to design and build India’s first concrete, modernist building, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, considered an outstanding example of harmony and humility in architectural design.

Nakashima was so deeply affected by the location’s spiritual significance that he joined the Ashram. Leader Sri Aurobindo gave him the Sanskrit name Sundarananda, meaning “one who delights in beauty.”

4. Bookmatched Timber

Many, but not all, Nakashima coffee tables incorporate book-matched timber. Book-matched boards come from cutting logs sequentially during lumber processing. The boards are numbered and stored together, then are matched end-to-end, side by side, or perpendicularly in the finished furniture.

After book-matched boards are opened and joined, they give a mirrored effect. Nakashima preferred this look to the “dull and uninteresting” look of other furniture and sometimes incorporated up to six sequential boards in the same table.

Book-matching is a simple but painstaking process because boards must be tracked and integrated with care. Nakashima conducted his book-matching instinctually by spending hours in quiet contemplation with logs and slabs to understand their inherent beauty, only making cuts precisely when and where necessary.

5. Signed Nakashima Boards

While most custom furniture makers finish by signing their pieces with their names, Nakashima rarely did so. Instead, he marked a board with the client’s name on the underside, to keep track of which boards were for each client.

These marked boards are a key factor in establishing the heritage of Nakashima furniture. To understand why they’re so important, imagine Nakashima and his client hand-selecting timber together in a lumber yard or his workshop. Upon choosing just the right piece, Nakashima marked it with his client’s name in simple black marker or grease pencil. The marked board is evidence of his artistic process and dedication to designing with his individual clients in mind.

Unless you’re lucky enough to have an original order card or shop drawing, a marked Nakashima board is considered an essential identifier. If the authenticity of a piece is ever in question, contact the George Nakashima Woodworkers or a qualified Nakashima furniture appraiser or gallery owner who specializes in his work.

George Nakashima Coffee Tables

Some of the very best pieces of George Nakashima are his coffee tables. Here are a few of his finest coffee tables recently held by Moderne Gallery.