Inside the Nakashima Workshop Full of the World’s Rarest Wood

It's kind of a sacred space in here. It's one of the quietest parts of the property. I'm generally out here alone. So it's a meditative process looking for the right piece of wood for the right project. My name is Michael. This is a Nakashima Woodworkers private wood collection that houses some of the rarest wood in the world. So this is the pole barn. This is the largest woodshed on the property. This is majority domestic hardwoods. But there's a few dozen different varieties of wood in here. And it's a constant evolution revolving door of bringing in new wood and using the wood that George brought in. George Nakashima had a very huge influence on woodworkers and designers globally. And we just tried to carry on that tradition. And one of the things that George was doing to some extent based on necessity and to some extent to highlight all of the natural beauty in the wood was to use the wood differently and shift the perspective of how to use wood. And so he used a lot of off cuts and pieces that would otherwise be discarded. Even this particular board, it was covered in dirt and has lots of knots and bug holes and lots of imperfections that previously would be, you know, cut away and discarded and we're kind of highlighting those imperfections. All of that is part of the story of that particular piece of wood and that particular tree. The oldest wood here is probably the Persian walnut that came in the 60s. There was a Philadelphia architect that imported a number of logs from Iran. And when they arrived, he no longer wanted them. And so George bought all of them. There's not a lot left, but it is a beautiful wood. It's a type of wood that is virtually impossible to get at this point. The value is generally based on size and age of the tree as well as rarity. So the wider and older it is and the thicker it's cut. But the Persian walnut is, you know, the rarest kind of that we have here. So that would be on the high end of the price range. This is just some small chunks of East Indian rosewood that we use for some of the butterflies. The East Indian rosewood can't really legally be imported anymore. So what we have, we have. And when it gets used up, that will be the end of it. To build a table of this size, it depends a bit because every piece of wood is slightly different. Some might have no butterflies, some might have 10 or 20. So it depends on all of those imperfections. But it could be anywhere from one to three weeks for a table of this size. These are a design element to join together two consecutive boards in a log that are bookmatched. So there's a space between the table and then the butterflies are holding those two pieces together. And in these other locations, it's, you know, to prevent any of this cracking from migrating. So mostly structural. No nails. We use some screws in certain applications, but it's mostly joinery. It doesn't necessarily look like too much in this state. These are all rough sawn boards. Most of them milled on a bandsaw. Some of them on a chainsaw mill. So you can see the bandsaw marks in the wood. It's rough and covered in dirt. So you won't see the clarity of the grain until it's planed down and you can see the color and the depth of the grain. When we see it in log form, we'll determine how thick to mill it. And that will, to a large extent, determine how it gets used in furniture. These ones were 12 plus feet long and two inches thick. So they lended themselves to a dining table top. Narrower, straighter, might be something like a long cabinet. Smaller end cuts. Small coffee tables or small end tables. It's about maximizing the log and using every part as much as possible. These ones here came from England. This is English oak burl. Some of these are four inches thick and weigh close to a thousand pounds. I believe these were acquired by Mira in the early 90s maybe, I think. That was before my time. But these can't be found again either. This is some of our redwood root burl. This is a portion of what we have. Some of this has been here for many decades. This particular one, I think, is maybe about six or seven years old. And this is part of the root system of a redwood tree. So this would have been below ground. These came from a sawyer in California that George worked with initially. Walnut was George's favorite wood to work with. The majority of it is sourced locally. And it's been used in furniture for a long time for its workability and its rich colors. And it's kind of what we're known for. The majority of the stuff in here is sustainably harvested. It comes from local properties, trees that people take down. The majority of the walnut is from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York. It could be as many as three or four years from sourcing the wood to drying it and selecting it, designing it and building it. We have a local sawyer that knows what type of wood we're looking for. And then air dry it on site for at least two or three years, generally, depending on the thickness of the material. And then kiln dry it. And then after that process, it comes to us. So some of the stuff has been here for decades. And some of it gets used the first day. Some of the clients come in. Some choose from photographs. We generally pull out a few different options for whatever size and type of wood they're looking for, depending on what type of furniture. So it seems like a lot of wood. But, you know, when you're looking for something very specific, it can be a bit harder to find. And some clients will come through and select a specific board that they fall in love with. And we go from there. Each of these slabs would be an individual piece, essentially either a large coffee table or maybe a bookmatch table. A standing sculpture, even. Some of these with such interesting edges and kind of freeform pattern that it's just striking to look at. So these would mostly be highlighted tops of a piece of furniture. And the base or the rest of it would be made from different material. You can count all of the growth rings, obviously. But trees grow at different rates depending on where they're living. In a California climate, they're going to grow a bit faster. Depending on the variety, you can make a guesstimation. Most of this stuff is probably between 30 and 100 years old. It's a very special place. It's a unique place. It's a calm place to work most of the time. It's a beautiful setting. And we get to work with this incredible wood.