The Soul of a Tree: A Woodworker's Reflections

The Soul of a Tree is the rare furniture book written from inside the workshop rather than about it: part memoir, part working method, part argument that the maker's job is to find the one right use for a particular board.

Published by Kodansha International in 1981 with an introduction by the Nobel laureate George Wald, the volume runs to some 221 pages of colour and black-and-white photographs, drawings and shop renderings of the tables, desks, chairs and cabinets produced at Nakashima's farm compound outside New Hope, Pennsylvania. He sets the free-edge slabs, butterfly joints and rare timber against the biography that produced them: an architecture degree from MIT, years in Paris and Tokyo, work in Antonin Raymond's office, the design of Golconda at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, and internment at Camp Minidoka, where he learned traditional Japanese joinery from Gentaro Hikogawa.

Nakashima (1905-1990) remains the reference point for the American studio furniture movement, and the workshop has continued under his daughter Mira Nakashima. The book has stayed in print through successive Kodansha editions since its first appearance.