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sion, sold his beloved car and purchased
a steamship ticket around the world, sail-
ing for its far corners, one year stretching
to seven, extending his stays in Paris and
Tokyo.
Tokyo proved particularly pivotal for
Nakashima. He secured a place in the
architectural office of Antonin Raymond,
who posted Nakashima to India to super-
vise the construction of a dormitory at an
Indian ashram. In the process of helming
the project for four years, Nakashima
became a disciple of the community
and a prescriber of its teachings. Says
Mira: "He intended to stay there the rest
of his life," and may well have had the
world not lurched toward war. But as it
did, Nakashima left India to reunite with
his family in the United States, and set up
a small furniture workshop in Seattle, in
peaking of her father, iconic
woodworker George Nakashima,
from a compound almost entirely
of his creation in New Hope, Penn-
sylvania, Mira Nakashima says:
"He literally built a life." Born in Spokane,
Washington, in 1905, George Nakashima
was a Pacific Northwesterner from the
start; prone to traversing mountains and
thick forests on foot, he yearned for the
wilderness, studied architecture at the
University of Washington, and spent
summers (save for one cosmopolitan
season at the École des Beaux-Arts in
Paris) working the salmon canneries of
rough and rugged Alaska. Proving equally
suited to the East Coast, Nakashima
completed his postgraduate studies at
MIT, landed professionally in New York
City and, obligated by the Great Depres-
42 DIGS.NET
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