You can see why when you visit the serene Nakashima studio in New Hope, Pa.
"George let the wood speak for itself, " says Gerald Everett, a Nakashima studio woodworker for 29 years.
Unlike George Nakashima's pieces, the new Nakashima studio furniture doesn't have much of a secondary market -- yet.
Nakashima died a year later, but the Krosnick project gave his daughter the courage to carry on her father's work.
Indeed, much of the Nakashima art -- both the father's and now the daughter's -- consists of finding and cutting remarkable trees.
Nakashima's health was failing, so he passed the project on to his daughter, Mira Nakashima-Yarnall, who had apprenticed with him for 20 years.
It is this, more than ornate woodworking, that distinguishes Nakashima's work.
Aibel has been selling vintage Nakashima since 1986 and is putting on a joint show with Yarnall on the origins and continuity of the Nakashima tradition.
"It's almost like a festival, people just camping in the center of Ginza, just drinking and playing and talking to each other, " said Taiyo Nakashima, a 34-year-old Web designer.
On May 24, 1989, the day before George Nakashima's 84th birthday, the second-largest collection of his prized wood furniture was reduced to a pile of ash in a house fire.
George Nakashima designed and built its Japanese-influenced buildings himself.
You are not seeing these crazy prices for furniture makers like George Nakashima anymore, but he will remain a blue-chip name in American furniture in the future, regardless of the vagaries of the market right now.
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The loss of the 110 made-to-order pieces lovingly assembled by collectors Arthur and Evelyn Krosnick grieved them terribly, so Nakashima agreed to replace the entire collection, down to the 12 wooden place mats he had given the Krosnicks as a Christmas present.
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