item: splay leg table, 1948
designer: george nakashima
materials: hickory top american walnut legs, apron and edge detail
courtesy of: wallpaper magazine
photo via: furnish.co.uk and galere
comments: george nakashima was trained as an architect before he began to design and build furniture. his work is beautiful in its simplicity and respect for materials. he was able to bring beauty out of wood that others might have discarded but that he felt was worth the challenge. some of his pieces had butterfly joints, visible splits in the wood and left the rough edges of the wood to show the beauty of the imperfections in the wood, as shown in the second photo. he felt that the hardships the tree may have suffered (time, wind and weather) only added to the beauty. profoundly beautiful.