The Inner Studio - Riverside Architectural Press

THE INNER STUDIO
living in Philadelphia, I looked up the number of George
Nakashima, and the woman who answered the phone told me the
studio was closed because he had recently passed away. I put the
phone down and waited.
It Takes Time
A year later I called again and learned that the studio had reopened.
I can remember my first thought when I rubbed my hand across the
furniture: George Nakashima had a different attitude to work than
most people. He loved what he did. It was obvious that every piece
in the studio was a work of love, every piece was mindfully created
before it was made. I felt myself slow down in the presence of this
lesson. Patience and reflection were woven so deeply into the objects
that creation showed no sign of time. I became more reflective. Time
was not the factor driving these creations. Whoever had the time to
make these works had recognized and made a great connection with
the timeless. Looking at a table, I felt his discipline and the seldomtasted
freedom that comes from such patience. What happens to the
purpose of production when time is withdrawn as the great shaper
of things? If not time, then who and what will determine the start
and end of things? What could replace the clock? I felt my own
sense of time expand and dissolve as I looked at the work. These
pieces weren’t so much about willing an outcome as they were a tacit
consent to serve and honor the spiritual part of us that creates. This
furniture was a built meditation on the absolute sum of the inner
and the outer world. Issues of function seemed unimportant. The
energy and poise of each piece felt like an offering and my own sense
of the sacred was illuminated in their presence.
Perhaps some things were meant to be built in response to
unseen forces, out of time, out of the eye of society and into the lost
world of physical things. Why can’t the built world call us like a
shaman’s drum? This isn’t the way we do things now. The Jungian
analyst James Hollis says the test for soul is found in three things:
luminosity, depth, and resonance. I want to add another quality
that I found in this studio: the voices of ancestors. The voices of the
ones who have come before were strong.
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