Lindo maravilhoso! The designs of Sergio Rodrigues

Since Brazil will be hosting the 2016 Olympics, we here at Swanky Retro thought it would be appropriate to highlight the designs of Sergio Rodrigues. We recently bought a couple of his pieces and the more we learn about him, the more respect and admiration we have for his creative aesthetic!

Sergio Rodrigues (b. 1927) is a Brazilian architect-turned-furniture-designer and a highly collectable mid-century master. His designs were of central importance to the establishment of a Brazilian identity in the modern world.

Having graduated from the School of Architecture and Urbanism in Rio de Janeiro in 1952, Rodrigues founded his own studio, Oca Industries, in ’56. Oca, which means “native indian hut,” began as a studio of interior design, decoration and set design, and an art gallery and showroom for Sergio Rodrigues’ furniture.[1]

Rodrigues was able to capture aspects of “Indigenous Brazil” in his furniture designs. This was an important time in the modernization of Brazil as the country was experiencing rapid economic growth under president Juscelino Kubitschek (1956-’61).

However, creativity began getting stifled following the military coup of ’64 and years of crippling debt and inflation. “It was a dark time for everyone connected to the arts,” says Rodrigues. “They [the regime] did not have the slightest interest in culture. They didn’t realize what they had.”[2] Many important pieces of Brazilian culture were lost or destroyed.

One of Rodrigues’ most famous designs is the Sheriff chair (or Mole chair). Its informal appearance and slouchingly casual look are very inviting. The leather cushions and support straps make it feel like you are sitting in an upholstered hammock-like basket.

Photo credit: modern-furniture.de

In 1961 the Sheriff chair won the Concorso Internazionale del Mobile first prize at the Furniture Biennial in Cantu, Italy.[3]

Rodrigues has been very productive throughout his life designing more than 1200 different furniture models. Since the 1980s, younger architects and designers have picked up where the old masters left off, continuing the spirit and character of the mid-century masters like Rodrigues.

Rodrigues’ 1962 designed Chifruda chair was revived in 2009 (see picture below), and some of his pieces are still being made today.[4] The Museum of Modern Art also has a Sheriff chair on permanent display.

Sergio Rodrigues Chifruda chair (photo credit: nicedecors.com)

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[1] www.stylepark.com

[2] Rainbow Blue Nelson, WSJ: the magazine of the Wall Street Journal, Aug 2011.

[3] http://www.sergiorodrigues.com.br/english/index.asp

[4] Patricia Shackleford, Chicago Tribune, Oct 10, 2010.

The organic designs of George Nakashima

Although Swanky Retro has never encountered a piece of furniture from this artist, we love his designs and philosophy so much that we’d probably keep anything we did find for ourselves!

The artist/philosopher/architect who is known as the father of the American Craft Movement, George Katsutoshi Nakashima (1905–1990) made it his mission to guard the souls of trees. He felt that the trees were his relatives and deserving of great respect.

Photo credit: craftinamerica.org

Most of his furniture pieces incorporate the natural knotholes and gaps in the wood, taking the natural beauty of the tree’s shape and enhancing it. He explains his philosophy in his autobiography written in 1981, The Soul of a Tree: A Woodworker’s Reflections.

While many of his contemporaries fiddled with stainless steel, Formica and molded plastic, Nakashima worked in wood: walnut, bubinga, rosewood, and cherry.[1] He often contemplated a piece of wood for years, meditating with it, before a design took shape.[2]

Photo credit: chubbcollectors.com

His signature designs are his large-scale free-form tables with tops made from a single piece of wood with unfinished edges that follow the natural shape of the wood.

Born in Spokane, Washington, Nakashima received his masters in architecture from MIT. His career took him everywhere from New York, to Paris, Tokyo, and Pondicherry, India where the local ashram’s guru dubbed him “Sundarananda,” which is Sanskrit for “One who delights in beauty.”[3]

Throughout his lifetime, Nakashima explored the intrinsic beauty and expressive qualities of wood. His bond with nature began with his boyhood experiences as an Eagle Scout. He studied woodworking with a Japanese master and learned the ancient techniques of joinery.[4] He was fascinated with the Japanese Folk Art movement that he encountered in the 1930s, which called for a return to traditional techniques and craftsmanship.

Photo credit: badluxury.blogspot.com[5]

He was often interested in what other woodworkers would throw away, using their discards and turning them into astoundingly beautiful pieces. He preferred keeping things “hand-cut, with a built up penetrating oil finish so that the surface took on a greater smoothness, depth, and shimmer, bringing out the intricate dazzle of the grains. Some grains look almost three-dimensional.”[6]

Photo credit: badluxury.blogspot.com

Nakashima’s work achieves a warmth, grace and purity that make it so universally appealing and appropriate, and with the same flourish of movement as a Picasso.[7] He is truly in a category by himself, creating an aesthetic bridge between East and West.

“People feel that living with a Nakashima can give them peace. Especially in this world, which is so fast and materialistic . . . You can’t sit on a Nakashima chair and think bad thoughts,” says Mira Nakashima-Yarnall, George Nakashima’s daughter and torchbearer.[8]  Mira has reopened the Nakashima Studio in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and continues to make some of the more popular and famous designs of her father’s including the conoid chair (see photo).

Conoid chair. Photo credit: Rosemary McKittrick[9]

Nakashima wrote in his autobiography that he believed furniture should be used and lived with, that scratches and dents add character to the pieces (a process he described as "Kevinising" after his son Kevin who had made several scratches on furniture in their home). He was quite selfless, and many historians have remarked about his distinct lack of ego: he refused to sign pieces until 1980—and then only in India ink with a felt-tip pen—and then only under pressure because so many imitators were beginning to copy his work.[10]

Nakashima often jokingly referred to himself as a “Hindu Catholic Shaker Japanese American.” He believed in the Shaker work ethic, directing his endeavors toward the divine and making things useful and beautiful, as simply as possible. He said, “My relationship to furniture and construction is basically my dialog with a tree, with a complete and psychic empathy.”[11]

His pieces are very expensive (a Frenchman's Cove style table on PBS's Antiques Roadshow was appraised at $50-60 K, some pieces have sold for $500,000). George Nakashima was such a citizen of the world that there is global interest in his works.

Photo credit: artnet.com

Awards and Honors[12]

1952 – gold medal for craftsmanship, American Institute of Architecture

1979 – made Fellow of the American Craft Council

1981 – Hazlett Award

The Martin Guitar Company has honored George Nakashima with the Claro Walnut Commemorative Edition acoustic guitar:

http://www.martinguitar.com/images/downloads/newsletter/Vol_8.pdf

Several Nakashima pieces are on display at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, PA. Many other important museums have Nakashima items as well.

Find more info at:

http://www.nakashimawoodworker.com/

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[1] Philip Herrera, “The Glory of Wood: Nakashima,” Town & Country, 2002.

[2] Barbara King, “Design: Rhapsody in Wood: The World Clamors for the Earthy and Elegant Mastery of George Nakashima,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 21, 2004

[3] Geoff Gehman, “He Tapped the Soul of a Tree,” Morning Call, 1^st ed., Allentown, PA, June 24, 2001.

[4] Barbara King, LA Times

[5] http://badluxury.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-fuxury_20.html

[6] King, LA Times

[7] Ibid.

[8] Geoff Gehman, “He Tapped the Soul of a Tree.”

[9] Rosemary McKittrick, “George Nakashima furniture,” Antiques & Collecting Magazine, Vol 108, No. 5, (July 2003), 46-47.

[10] King, LA Times

[11] Judith Miller, 20^th Century Design, London, UK: Octopus Publishing Group, 2009, pg. 38.

[12] Wolfgang Saxon, George Nakashima obituary, New York Times, June 17, 1990.