Seagrass Chair

The celebrated Japanese-American furniture maker and woodworker George Nakashima came to Pondicherry in 1936 as part of a team of architects building the first reinforced concrete building in India for the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. His first encounter with Indian culture, spirituality and materiality proved transformative and he received the name “Sundarananda”. Post-independence, Nakashima was invited by Gira Sarabhai, one of the founders of National Institute of Design (NID), to work for the institute to develop a range of contemporary wood furniture. This was one among many international collaborations starting with the foundational collaboration with Ray and Charles Eames that seeded modern design education and practice at the NID. Nakashima came to Ahmedabad in November 1964 and spent 2-3 weeks at the institute. He developed and produced new designs and furniture apart from adapting his earlier designs and left behind detailed drawings for 32 different types of furniture pieces. This will session explore the significance of the Nakashima collection which left an indelible influence in the institute, not only by the furniture pieces itself, but also on the designers who worked with him and in the pedagogic process of the furniture design programme, which remains one of the core design programmes offered by the NID.