Nakashima: Unique, Exceptional Queen Bed with Live-Edge Headboard in Burl and Walnut

Mira Nakashima (b. 1942)

A one of a kind, queen-size bed with an exquisite free-form headboard in myrtle burl and black walnut by Mira Nakashima, George Nakashima’s heir. A master craftsperson who honed her artisan’s hand and artist’s eye at her father’s side, Nakashima often spends years studying a piece of wood before making a single cut, considering how to best reveal its essence and integrate it into a perfect piece of furniture. As each tree has a distinct shape and size, a unique color and character, Nakashima’s work emphasizes what she terms each board’s “distinctly different personality,” ideally manifested in a particular use.

The majestic slab of burl that anchors this unique bed was selected for its extraordinary natural features: A dramatic, tempestuous live edge. A swirling grain, flowing between ridges and eddies. A variegated color pattern, polished to a deep lustre. Sliced with the precision of a diamond cutter and the soul of a poet, the burl seems to move, breathe, live. There is drama to uncovering the beauty within the tree, a beauty that has remained hidden for centuries.

That organic vitality and baroque form are counter-balanced by the taut lines and elegant simplicity of the burl’s rectilinear frame, in contrasting planks of black walnut. The whole achieves a harmony of proportion and scale, at once beautiful and utilitarian, produced when the finest materials are shaped with intense, un-showy skill.

New Hope, Pennsylvania. Signed and dated “Mira Nakashima, 2002.”

Headboard: 59.25″ H x 85.5″ W Platform: 80″ L x 60″ W