George Nakashima
Conoid Chair | Single, 1987
Material: American Black Walnut, Hickory
Dimensions: 20.5 x 22 x 35 in | Seat Height 17 in
A single example of George Nakashima’s iconic Conoid Chair dating to 1987. Designed circa 1960, the chair features a formed, cantilevered seat, sled runners, and continuous leg/stiles.
“In the composition of spindle back and solid seat, the Conoid Chair reveals its debt to the Windsor chair and to Nakashima’s designs from the 1940s. However, it differs from its antecedents in that its substantial stiles are continuous with its legs. Its twin legs, sled runners, and cantilevered seat also reflect important changes within the field of modern furniture design, dating to the 1920s.
Cantilevered chairs, first developed by progressive European architects for the 1927 Weissenhof Siedlung exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany, revolutionized modern design. Those chairs, however, were executed in tubular steel via mass production – a material and methodology far removed from those employed by Nakashima.
The bridge between the designs of Nakashima a those of the 1920s is apparent in the work of Alvar Aalto, completed in the early 1930s. Aalto expanded the cantilever principle by executing his designs in wood, a material preferred by those who found steel furniture alien to human needs. Aalto achieved the cantilever by using plywoods and laminates, materials that have been used only intermittently in Nakashima’s work and only for secondary elements in a few of his designs. Nakashima’s use of solid wood in the Conoid line is consistent with his work immediately prior to World War II, and also represents a new dimension to cantilevered design. Since solid wood is considerably heavier than laminates, Nakashima used sled runners which permit the chair to be moved without straining its frame. This choice was a response to the challenge of functionalism, not merely a matter of copying earlier cantilevered chairs that used sled runners. Nakashima’s lighter, earlier chairs of the 1940s and 1950s did not incorporate this element which was unnecessary for those particular designs” (‘George Nakashima Full Circle’, Derek E. Ostergard, 1989, p.155).
George Nakashima was born in Spokane, Washington in 1905 to Japanese parents who had immigrated to the United States. Educated and trained as an architect at the University of Washington, Nakashima received his Master’s degree in Architecture from M.I.T. in 1930. After working briefly as an architect in the United States he left for Paris seeking the creative energies of one of the great urban centers of the day. From there he traveled extensively, ending up at the home of his grandmother, living on a farm on the outskirts of Tokyo.
| Dimensions | 20.5 × 22 × 35 in |
|---|---|
| Artist | |
| Date | 1987 |
| Material | American black walnut, Hickory |
| Style |
