Photograph of George Nakashima by Jack Rosen, 1980s, courtesy of James A. Michener Art Museum

George Nakashima is a national treasure. He has an extraordinary feeling for wood and all its fantastic variations.-Anne d'Harnoncourt

George Nakashima was a master woodworker and furniture maker whose spiritual mission was to bring out the character of his wood. Trained as an architect at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he worked in Antonin Raymond's firm in Japan. Nakashima discovered his calling as a furniture craftsman while working at a monastery in India. Raymond brought Nakashima to his farm outside New Hope in 1943, after sponsoring his release from a wartime internment camp for Americans of Japanese ancestry. In 1945 Nakashima purchased a plot of land in New Hope, where he built his home, as well as a furniture factory which has since expanded to twelve buildings. Enormously successful, he opened factories in Japan and India, as well. Nakashima designed every piece of furniture his firm produced. He allowed the form of the wood to dictate the shape of the piece he would design. He maximized imperfections in the wood and fixed cracks with butterfly joints, in this way allowing flaws to enhance the piece's distinctive beauty. Nakashima's most famous work was his Altar of Peace, a shrine at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan.