Traditional Arts and Other Crafts

Are they Art or Craft?

On the appointed Saturday, we planned our pilgrimage to the Nakashima workshop. It is located on the outskirts of New Hope. We had never been to New Hope, which was billed as a picturesque historic town. On the following Sunday, in Allentown was to be an “Outsider Art” festival. The festival was to be held at Cedar Creek Park the same location as the Science Center we had previously visited. We decided to stay over in the centrally located Tohickton Campground again. The wooden covered bridge welcomed us.

New Hope is as discreetly upscale as Beverly Hills is ostentatious. As we passed the new state of the art Firehall, I was impressed by the excellent architecture. How to make a utilitarian public building blend into a colonial background without sacrificing any of the practical aspects. The actual downtown was as picturesque as it had been billed. Small brick buildings lined the winding street leading over a footbridge. There were more

“modern american / asian fusion” cafes and craft art galleries than I could count. The crafts were definitely a cut above T-shirt shop souvenir level but never the less resembled many other crafty collections. Interspersed with the eateries were more shopperies, every better brand seemed to be represented. Attractive or not, not really my kinda place. My preference tends towards funky family-run hole in the walls and crowded charity-run thrift shops. Francis was thoroughly unimpressed; he was dreaming of Nakashima Saturday.

The Nakashima Studio Workshop is technically in New Hope but out of town in a forest setting. Access even with directions written and digital led down one rural lane into another. The farms and woodland estates were wide spread, so the house numbers were hard to follow. Did we miss that turn? Yes, we did. Did we pass the house number? Yes, we did. By the time we arrived, we had made as many U turns as conventional ones. We would have passed the studio a second time but for sighting a glimpse of sukiya style walls though the foliage. We were a bit early and the parking lot was largely empty. No one seemed apparent and we wandered around unescorted. 

While I am careful not to touch or meddle with anything, I have tend to ignore “do not enter” signs. I call out for advice and if no one responds I discreetly peer in and explore. This I must admit to doing in the actual wood working area. There was table being clamped on a worksurface. It was fascinating to me to observe the position and type of clamps used to construct the furniture. Which tools were actually used? A combination of japanese chisels and hand tools, supplemented by normal home power hand tools and a few top of the line floor units.

Slipping back on the approved tour, there was an smaller workshop open to the public. It was used for chair construction, no power tools here, and the parts ready for assemble were as shapely as any craft sold in the stores downtown. For a wood worker it was very informative to see the kinds of adhesives and finishing materials used. Next we proceeded to the sales room. A Nakashima niece welcomed us, distributing maps of the complex and provided a bit of family history. While an actual furniture item would be out of my price range, a catalog of current work was a good souvenir and funded the Nakashima Peace Project. It had been formed by George Nakashima as a non-profit dedicated to supporting world peace initiatives.

The sales room was a beautiful structure in its own right, as well as display room of phenomenal samples. Built in a traditional style of natural wood, the walls, floors and doors had achieved the deep glow of antique furniture. Delicate handmade paper set in hardwood frames screened the area while a wall of windows brought the forest outside into the space. It was a glorious fusion of traditional Japanese technique and sensibilities with modern American lifestyle. This was just the showroom. The refined beauty awaited us in the studio office. George Nakashima had taken the craft of woodworking and turned it into an artform glorifying the souls of trees.

Along the way, the previously empty workroom was now staffed. Photos in “The soul of a tree” showed a much younger man working with George Nakashima, this was one of his old hands. The gentleman at work was muttering about his glue not setting the way he wanted and reclamping his project. It was reassuring to think that even someone with decades of experience ran into problems. I shyly called out to him, could there possibly be a little scrap of wood, of which he would be disposing? A chunk of wood from Nakashima's workshop would be for me a perfect souvenir. He laughed and came over with a handful of beautifully grained mahogany cutoffs. Lovely samples of the grace in wood.

George Nakashima had begun as an architect. While now best known for his furniture, he had continued to experiment with building techniques. At his New Hope home he developed several cutting edge concrete roof systems, which one could see on his workshop buildings. The buildings each had unique contours, again combining Japanese tradition and .Mid-century Modern aesthetics. In the studio office we discovered extraordinary pieces on display, the interior itself was a gem and a six foot tall and wide burl screen was truly one of a kind.

Seated in a chair, greeting the gawkers was a fellow, who I thought bore a resemblance to some photos I had seen of the Nakashima family. He had a devilish sense of humor, aligned with Francis' and they were soon teasing each other about work in general and woodworking in particular. Indeed he was George's son, Kevin. I was entralled to meet the son of a personal hero. It was also a treat for me to see further echoes of my personal taste repeated; Kevin was wearing a large Navaho Belt buckle. Navaho sandcast work is a penchant of mine. When I admired his belt, he wanted to talk about silver and collecting. Kevin was happy to chat about any topic, lumber or jewelry! He had to turn his attentions to other visitors and we went downstairs to tour the stored lumber. Stacks of matched flitches, interesting odd shaped random slabs, perfect for chairs or small benches. The entire basement was full of drying hard wood boards, all emitting a smoky incense-like aroma. A feast for our eyes and a rich perfume to our noses.

As we wandered back up stairs, a petite older woman was entering the studio, in her hand she carried a Martin guitar case. Mira Nakashima! Since her Fathers death in 1990 she had not only filled the orders, recreating some of her Father's classic designs, but also created new Mira classics. She used the same method and techniques which she had learned in childhood, analyzing each tree trunk for the best cuttings, each piece of lumber for it's best use and hand marking each section for the best application. 

Pointing out the guitar case to Francis with a whispered “Mira”, he immediately began discussing wood and music. Indeed in the guitar case, was the Nakashima number one Dreadnought. She said, she now mostly played at church. Truly I felt it was an honor to meet his descendants, practical and familial, carrying on his aesthetic vision and, through the Peace Foundation, his ethical vision.

Having truly had an multifaceted experience we drove back to our campsite for a quiet evening. One does meet interesting people in a campground. Setting in front of a small camper next to us was large English Bulldog. While I made friends with the beast, Francis chatted with the owner. She was a mobile on-line programmer, living and working out of her RV. As long as she had internet she could work, supporting herself and the beast in comfort. They traveled throughout the country together living on their own terms on their own schedule. She was just one of many modern nomads we met on our short trips. 

Once my mental image had been folks living hermit-like off the grid, staying on undeveloped abandoned property or Bureau of Land Management vacant areas. Certainly, those folks have been and still are out there. This is a new movement, in part created by the internet. Community minded travelers, gainfully employed tax-payers creating a new mobile economy. The younger generation tends to have well paid on-line tech jobs, while their elders, often having reared a family conventionally or recently retired, move from temporary job to another. Nearby large seasonal sorting and packing houses (think Walmart or Amazon at Xmas) free campsites are provided to encourage these migrant workers to congregate. There are online communities to keep them digitally connected and mailing services to keep them physically connected. Artisans also found this nomadic life appealing. Character actors would appear in Renaissance Festivals during the season, take the roles of clerks, cooks and bottle washers off-season. Craft fairs we discovered also attracted their followers.

As the modern nomads were creating a outsider social community. In Allentown, they were encouraging an outsider art community, with it turned out an overlap of the two. On Sunday, we returned to Cedar Creek Park for the Outsider Arts Festival. Arrayed along one side of the Creek were booths and pavilions. An interesting variety of musical performances were in process. Emo local composers alternated with spoken word poetry, sonic jazz or Asian throat singing. There was something for every outre taste. In the various booths were examples of varied crafts, t-shirts with comic logos, painted plaques with motivational sayings, beaded jewelry. It was thematically a bit different from the usual craft fair but really just the same stuff.

All except in one booth. There was one booth with something neither Francis nor I had ever seen before. Engraved and stained into a variety of wooden objects were fine scraffito lines resembling bonsai trees or lightening strikes. It appeared to be some kind of wood burning technique but how would one create those fine fractal patterns? There was an old wooden kitchen table ennobled with these elegant motifs, kitchen chairs with similar designs on the back supports, as well as smaller treen. I was excited, something new and different! Clearly I was not alone in my interest as virtually every item was marked sold. The charming young woman staffing the booth explained that her boyfriend was the artisan so she was not exactly sure how it was done. They were semi-nomadic often traveling from one town to another for their craft fairs. She did divulge that the decorative motifs were a burning technique and involved a microwave transformer. This would become the kernel of a research project. For reference, they are called Litchenberg Figures, named after a 18^th century German physicist. Ya' never know where you'll learn something new!

While Francis and I found the outsider art rather conventional, albeit with a new wave twist, across the Creek at Cedar Creek College there was an on going, very traditional but to us wholly weird display. We discovered a marching band, drum majorette, baton twirling competition! Hoards of college students bedecked in colorful regalia were practicing their tunes and moves. The bands and drummers were all in quasi-military uniforms while the baton twirlers and flag tossers looked more cheerleaders. There were surely cheerleaders in the crowd as well. There were capes flapping, brass buttons gleaming and ostrich feather plumes flying on tall crowned hats. The cacophony of brass and drums at a dozen different tempos blended into a cheerful assault combined with the instructional shouts from group leaders. There were dance moves, gymnastic flips and tricky step maneuvers. Was this sport or an art form?

 Off to the side, we encountered a drum team practicing. They discussed the beats using a symbolic language. It sounded like they were speaking in Morse code, dit dah dit. Francis went over to discuss the drumming system with them. He recognized their chat as being very similar to the konnakkol system used by Indian Drummers, a system which can be traced back to prehistoric times. The young collegians had never heard of Indian rhythmic mnemonics. They were interested to learn that they were echoing an ancient tradition, vocalizing as a technique to communicate beats. Drumming is considered high art in India, but to these young men it was just technique. 

It is all a matter of perspective, from ours the college kids on the Creek were far more creative and rather bizarre compared to the outsiders on the left bank. Similarly, we had found a number of unexpected locales in calm rural Pennsylvania. Along the way we had once again been confronted with the quandary: What is the division between art and  craft? When does technique turn beauty into emotion?