In my second year of art school, I enrolled in a studio foundation-level class titled “Three Dimensional Design.” In this course, a the instructor assigned a project that called for each student to design and fabricate a bench. What a “bench” exactly was seemed open to interpretation.

One of the required supplies for the course was a small miter box and saw set, which students used to cut balsa wood into a scale model mockup—in this case, of their bench concept before they built it as a full-size prototype. My model explored a low, Japanese-style wooden bench that I had hoped would comfortably seat one or two. Furthermore, I surmised that this bench could just as well serve as a small coffee table. Oddly enough, in my sketches I also referenced vintage wooden-box style lobster traps, which I had frequently seen used to make makeshift tables and other furniture in New England homes.

While working on my bench model, a professor suggested that I secure a copy of George Nakashima’s 1981 book The Soul of a Tree. Nakashima^[1] (1905—1990) was a Japanese-American woodworker and architect who became a leading figure of the American Studio Craft movement.^[2] The Foreword of Nakashima’s book, written by George Wald,^[3] described Nakashima as “an extraordinarily quiet man,” further stating that, “Nakashima’s silence goes with his wisdom of things.” In his closing paragraph, Wald stated:^[4]

It is people like Nakashima who in every age realize that human promise, who construct our abiding human heritage. For things made of stone, and clay and wood endure, even as the generations come and go and cities and civilizations rise and fall. And the trees will be there always, watching in silent witness as they have done throughout the ages.

In The Soul of a Tree, Nakashima states, “A tree provides perhaps our most intimate contact with nature. A tree sits like an avatar, an embodiment of the immutable, far beyond the pains of man.”^[5] After reading Nakashima’s book, I began to view wood as a material with a life and a narrative. As Wald noted of Nakashima in his Foreword, “he makes the dead wood live again in new ways,”^[6] and as Nakashima himself noted, “We work with boards from these trees, to fulfill their [the trees’] yearning for a second life.”^[7]

The following summer, I brought my unfinished full-size wooden bench crafted in pine to my parents’ home north of Boston, where my father and grandfather helped me sand and stain it. As the three of us finished the bench, I reflected on the life of the material and thus the life of the object itself. In this moment, I sensed why my professor suggested Nakashima’s book. Along these lines, among the many student projects I completed in art school, this bench is the only artifact I’ve kept and used for over 20 years.

Footnotes

1. See: “George Nakashima.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Mar 2026,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Nakashima.
2. See for instance the 2007 exhibition “One of a Kind: The Studio Craft Movement” at The Met: https://www.metmuseum.org/press-releases/one-of-a-kind-the-studio-craft-movement-2007-exhibitions.
3. See: “George Wald.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2 Feb 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wald.
4. Nakashima, George. The Soul of a Tree. Kodansha International, 1981, p. xix.
5. Ibid, p. xxi.
6. Ibid, p. xviii.
7. Ibid, p. xxi.

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