George Nakashima
Exceptional Bahut | The Krosnick Collection, 1990

Material: Claro Walnut, Manzanita Burl Handle

Signed: “Nakashima June 1990”

Moderne Gallery is proud to present a remarkable Bahut originating from the Krosnick Collection – a work completed in the last month of George Nakashima’s storied life that represents an incredible journey of resilience and revival.

On May 23, 1989, a tragic fire razed the home of Arthur and Evelyn Krosnick – longtime friends and collectors of George Nakashima. Within their home was 111 pieces of Nakashima’s work, a collection built over thirty years.

“’The day after the fire’, Evelyn recalls, ‘we went to visit George and it was his eighty-fourth birthday. I asked him, ‘Why did this happen to us?’ He said, ‘Evelyn, there is no reason for this to have happened. We will rebuild your house. The phoenix will rise.’

Nakashima, who died in 1990, made good on his promise, and dedicated the last year of his life to having the destroyed pieces rebuilt. For Nakashima the project was the last, most dramatic act in a long friendship with the Krosnicks, one that Derek Ostergard, a decorative arts specialist who wrote a book on the artist for a 1989 retrospective at the American Craft Museum, calls ‘one of the great collaborations at the end of the twentieth century’” (Loos, Ted. “The Phoenix Has Risen.” Art and Antiques, Sept. 1993).

The recreated Bahut, itself, is a true George Nakashima masterwork and represents a lifetime of experience, spirt, and mastery of his craft. Signed “Nakashima June 1990” in the interior of the work, the Bahut stands as one of the final works by Nakashima who passed away on June 15, 1990.

The Bahut’s case is made from Claro Walnut and features bookmatched door panels as well as a Manzanita Burl pull on its door. Arborist and woodworker Scott Wineland provided George Nakashima with the majority of his Claro Walnut and believes that the boards used to construct the Bahut are some of the first he ever cut for Nakashima. This is especially evidenced by the unique, long feathering of the grain. Additionally, the work features Nakashima’s signature exposed, handworked dovetail joinery along the juncture of the top and sides of the cabinet.

The design’s title, Bahut, is a French term referring to a large case piece typically used in a dining room. Ostergard notes that this nomenclature “was chosen for this piece as a gesture commemorating Nakashima’s early years in France. In 1928 he had studied at Fontainebleau and, in the early 1930s, had lived in Paris. The use of a foreign appellation reflects the broadening of Nakashima’s overall design vocabulary in the 1960s. He no longer used names of generic simplicity, such as New Chair and Armchair, but began to include words evocative of other cultures” (‘George Nakashima Full Circle’, Derek E. Ostergard, 1989, p.170).

After its completion, the Bahut joined its other Nakashima brethren in the Arlyn Room (a portmanteau formed from Arthur and Evelyn) of the rebuilt Krosnick home in Princeton, New Jersey. The new residence, aptly named Melody Woods III (the prior residence was titled Melody Woods II), was an exact recreation of the prior and was built using the original plans for the home designed by John Randal McDonald, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.

In 2006, the Bahut was offered for sale as part of the landmark auction “New Life for the Noble Tree: The Dr. Arthur and Evelyn Krosnick Collection of Masterworks by George Nakashima” at Sotheby’s. Since the auction, the work has been part of an important private collection. Moderne Gallery is now proud to share and offer this extremely important, meaningful Nakashima work.