Just a little context for these fabulous but lesser known architects: began their career with Frank Lloyd Wright, practiced in the US and Japan from the 20’s through the 60’s, and led a life of and by design, much like the other, possibly more famous, design couples Charles & Ray Eames and Allison & Peter Smithson. More directly related to our handmade modern furniture position here at 16th Workshop, it appears they were a very formative force in the life of George Nakashima.

The excerpt:

“The importance of the interior of our houses lies in the fact that they affect our thoughts, our lives, our innermost selves. They should be such as to bring about those states of mind to which we aspire in ourselves and families.”

“They should have a positive influence for the good. They should be serene, harmonious, practical. Starting from the practical, one goes to the beautiful. A young Polish man who used to live with us remarked, ‘I like to wash dishes here, Mrs. Raymond. The sink is convenient and the dishes are beautiful.’ The sense of efficient beauty about the old Japanese houses always strikes the foreign visitor.”

I will spare you the rest but she does end the essay with a final thought; ” ‘Elimination is the key to elegance.’ ”

These bolded notions are perfect in terms of how we approach the design of our furniture and thus what we consider important in interior design. I feel that if it works well and is pleasing to use as well then it must be beautiful (”efficient beauty”). I do consider the design process one of editing and thus elimination as well. The most prescient example I can think of is cutting away part of the drawer front to afford a pull rather than adding a knob. There you have it, 16th Workshop design in a nutshell. Check out the book as well.

Sharon and I were still in graduate school in Architecture and she had just returned from a teaching assistant stint in south India. She showed me some pictures of a dormitory that she had visited. It was incredibly modern and yet had been built in the late 1930s in the tropics. It was mind boggling to me how this building could have been built in this particular place and time. A year or so passed until we attended a lecture kicking off an exhibition of the building. We learned that the dormitory (designed by Antonin Raymond and built primarily under the supervision of George Nakashima and Frantisek Sammer) had been built almost entirely by hand (I mean every nut, bolt, piece of hardware, piece of furniture, louver etc.). Now, the circumstances of time and place were certainly unique and the design guidance of Nakashima incredibly influential but what remained for me was that this was Modern by hand. Modern, for me, had been about the machine and production by machine; Corbu’s “machine for living”, the Eames and their moulded plywood chairs, Aalto and Artek, and Archigram. Before seeing this building, Modern and handmade had been at odds for me. It was new versus old world and they didn’t belong together.

I think this building, by whisking Modern off to far away, pre-world war II India, away from the machine, western thinking and the city, made it fundamentally about people, making and living by any means, in any place, now (good one Chris, you figured out what modern means). It was not a style but an approach to making. Enough! Enjoy Sharon’s photos.

Made of Oregon Ash, this chair has no screws or bolts and is inspired by danish designs of the 1930’s-60’s.  Simply can’t do a chair without consulting the Danes.