Mira Nakashima

When her father passed away in 1990, Mira took over as main creative director of George Nakashima’s studio. Since then, she has continued the studio’s tradition of the woodworker’s devotion to the sacrifice of the tree, and has preserved the studio’s methods and techniques embraced by her father. With over forty years of practice in the studio, Mira Nakashima has an unprecedented intuitive and technical knowledge of the character and qualities of wood. A designer in her own right, she has taken the traditional designs to a new artistic level, as demonstrated in her recent collections.

However, her choices of where to cut the wood varies at an instinctual level from that of her father’s interpretations. The boards Mira marks suggest their own contours and dimensions. Mira says, “A tree is perhaps our most intimate contact with nature-each tree, each part of a tree, has its own particular destiny, its own special yearning to be fulfilled.”