Famed designer's daughter saves his firm.

Will reissuing Nakashima's furniture preserve his legacy?

By Caroline Tiger

New Hope, Pa. (FSB Magazine) -- In the finishing building at the New Hope, Pa., compound built in 1944 by master craftsman George Nakashima, a workman rubs tung oil mixed with varnish into the surface of a gorgeous ten-foot-long black-walnut dining table. When it's ready, the $25,000 work will be shipped to London. This table started as they all do, with the client making an appointment with Nakashima Inc. (nakashimawoodworker.com) creative director and co-owner Mira Nakashima-Yarnall, who is continuing her late father's work by reissuing his designs and producing new ones of her own. She hasn't had time to design any new pieces since her Redwood Collection debuted last fall at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery in Manhattan (perryrubenstein.com). "Not consciously, at least," she says. These days she's focusing her efforts on chipping away at the New Hope studio's year-and-a-half backlog.

Not long ago Mira was concentrating more on saving the business from collapse. Just a year after his 1989 retrospective at the American Craft Museum in New York City, now the Museum of Arts & Design (madmuseum.org), George Nakashima died at the age of 85. One by one, clients called to cancel or to request a deep discount on 3½ years' worth of back orders. Mira, along with her mother and brother, considered shutting down production and turning the place into a repair and refinishing shop. It looked as if the Nakashima story would conclude with its founder's death, as most family businesses do. Only 30% make it to the end of the second generation, according to professor John Davis of the Families in Business program at the Harvard Business School (exed.hbs.edu/programs/fib). Half of that 30% survive to the end of the third generation. "Very often the founder of a business has some real skills," says Davis. "The question in the next generation is, What skills do you need to keep things going?"

There's no doubt that Mira inherited her father's design ability. She earned an undergraduate degree in architectural sciences at Harvard and a master's degree in architecture from Waseda University in Tokyo. In 1970 she moved into a house across the street from her parents' home/studio and joined her father's business. He was an old-school Japanese authoritarian with traditional ideas of gender roles. He often consulted the experienced craftsmen in the wood shop, but he didn't seek Mira's input. In fact, he fired Mira so many times for voicing her opinion, she lost count once she stayed away for an entire year. (She still lived across the street, though.) "I remember my children getting used to it," says Mira, 63, sitting in the Japanese-style studio her father built four decades ago. "They'd sense my mood when I came home from work and say, 'Oh, no, he fired you again.' " He was more patient with trees than he was with people. Mira recalls the way he'd bristle when a client requested alterations. "He'd say, 'You'd better go to Macy's.' "

From internment to design recognition

The son of Japanese parents, George Nakashima grew up near Seattle and graduated from MIT with a degree in architecture. During World War II, he and his wife, Marion, along with baby Mira, were forced, like thousands of other Japanese Americans, to spend a year in an internment camp, this one based in Idaho. It was there that he met a traditional Japanese carpenter and decided to abandon architecture for furniture making. Nakashima embraced hand craftsmanship and saw furniture making as a means of paying homage to wood. He once wrote, "The woodworker's responsibility is to the tree itself, which has been sacrificed to live again in the woodworker's hands." He had what he called "long dialogues" with a board, sometimes meditating on it for years before it revealed its essence. He was one of the first furniture makers to celebrate wood's imperfections, enhancing the texture of the grain, knotholes, worm holes, and cracks.

Nakashima's work was popular during his lifetime, but that was nothing compared to its popularity now. Around 1994 interest began to spread outside the Northeast and across the U.S., and then, more recently, to Europe. Each year brings new auction records. In June 2006 a 1973 English burl-oak-and-walnut dining table went for $204,000 at Boston-based Skinner's (skinnerinc.com). In December a 1988 Arlyn dining table sold for a record $822,400 at Sotheby's (sothebys.com).

The current clamor for his pieces would probably alarm Nakashima, who believed that people should live simply and tread softly. He gave the impression of living a solitary existence - just him and the trees. "There was this myth that he was doing all the work by himself," says Mira. That myth left out Mira, her mother, who was the company's bookkeeper, and Mira's brother, now a co-owner, as well as the studio's 15 woodworkers. In actuality Mira had been drafting all the blueprints since the 1970s. By 1990 she was more than prepared to continue her father's legacy, but word of his brilliance had spread so far that it obscured her decades-long contribution. When he died, everyone figured the studio would shut down. Mira bought ads in Interior Design and Architectural Digest to show that the company was still in business, but the cost became prohibitive. Mira, her mother, and Jonathan Yarnall, who joined the studio as a woodworker in 1974 and married Mira soon after, took drastic pay cuts and shortened the workweek to four days to avoid layoffs.

Just when Mira thought the hundreds of slabs of wood sitting in the lumber shed were destined to rot, the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown, Pa. (michenermuseum.org), asked her to design a George Nakashima Memorial Reading Room. She made some of her dad's signature pieces - four Conoid lounge chairs with cantilevered seats and delicate turned spindles, and a claro-walnut free-edge coffee table. When the Michener's PR person learned that the studio was doing poorly, she sprang into action. "She got so much press for us," Mira says, "it was almost embarrassing." Mira also got buzz from Zen Modernism, a 1994 joint show at Moderne Gallery in Philadelphia (modernegallery.com), owned by dealer Robert Aibel, of her new designs alongside vintage pieces of her dad's.

The new publicity was the push needed to jolt lovers of fine furniture into realizing that the studio was still in business. A 1998 show, again with Aibel, spread the news farther afield with gushing pieces in the New York Times and Architectural Digest. In her self-effacing way, Mira credits the successes to others. Dealer Aibel disagrees. "She wouldn't be where she is now if she hadn't hung in and kept working," he says. "This just made it happen faster."

Publicity is no longer a problem. Art and interior design publications regularly feature her pieces. Meanwhile, Mira's managerial style is evolving. An employee recently complained that his co-workers were upset about her constant requests for input. They'd be happier, he said, if she just told them what to do. In other words, be more like her dad. But she'll never be that. As creative director, she runs a more democratic shop and she's much more accommodating of clients' requests, even though she can afford to turn away business. The studio's annual revenue climbed steadily from 1998 to 2004, when it leveled off at around $1 million. The studio raises prices a bit every year; the 2007 price list has new pieces ranging from $750 for a single stool to $34,000 for its largest dining table and higher for custom orders. At first Mira felt threatened when the vintage market started to catch on, but now she realizes it's a boon. "The prices of the vintage pieces are so high," says Mira, "that ours seem reasonable in contrast."

Succession issues loom

There have been new challenges in the past two years. Many of the original craftsmen have retired. Only three of the current ten learned under George, and much of their time goes into training new employees. Succession is a pressing issue. Mira was hoping that her son, who spent part of last year at the studio, would take the reins. But their styles clashed. She joined a local business forum to learn how other family businesses resolve such crises, and a counselor tried to mediate, but ultimately there was no fix. Because it looks as if the operation won't remain a family business, the forum suggested that Mira appoint an advisory board to guide the studio into the future. For now, she informally consults colleagues, including the studio's accountant, who recently urged her to hire a young designer to be groomed as her successor.

She's pleased that some younger employees are committed to her father's philosophy. One, who had done stints as a set designer and an acupuncturist, came onboard after sending her an e-mail that contained a moving recollection of his childhood visit to the Nakashima room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org). Mira contacted him when a job for a woodworker opened in the chair department. "He's very into the philosophy," she says. "I think he understands what my dad did and why he did it. That's important. It's more than the product. It's the thinking behind it."

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.