Hugo Nakashima-Brown Joins History and Innovation
- Adam Smith
- Sep 14
- 4 min read
Boston-based furniture artist draws from classical Chinese designs, tradition and craftsmanship
For wood sculptor Hugo Nakashima-Brown, classical Chinese furniture of centuries ago holds a series of mysteries that once investigated tell many stories.
The stories include how intriguing interlocking joints were created that could hold pieces together with no glue. How the furniture could endure — when kept in the right conditions — from as far back as the Ming Dynasty to today. How the designs could be re-imagined now and potentially be produced using modern computer-assisted robotics technology. And how the early iconic designs could influence furniture-making in Europe and eventually early U.S. craftsmen – yet often with little recognition of their original source of inspiration.
“Chinese furniture was traditionally not glued,” said Nakashima-Brown, “they would use these waxy hard woods and they didn’t have glues that would hold these hardwoods together.”
Of particular interest to Nakashima-Brown is the round-back armchair, a type of chair developed in old China. The artist, in fact, is now showing his interpretation of “Ming-inspired” chairs that he built to a smaller scale than the original types at an exhibit titled “Familiar Faces | Living Spaces” at Harvard Ed Portal’s Crossings Gallery in Allston. The show, on display through Oct. 23, also includes wooden portraits, sculptural yoga figures, and hand-bound books.
An Iowa native who grew up in Texas, Nakashima-Brown studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he earned a Bachelors in Fine Arts in painting, and the North Bennet St. School, where he earned a degree in 17th-19th cabinet and furniture making. Previous to North Bennet, he worked at a gallery in South Korea and at the famed George Nakashima Woodworkers in New Hope, Pennsylvania, before settling in Boston with a shared studio in Needham. He is currently a junior professor at RISD, holding the title of “Critic” in the Experimental and Foundation Studies department.
As someone who is of Japanese descent, Nakashima-Brown, 30, said he is especially influenced by Japanese and Chinese designs as well as their earlier Indian influences.
When he starts talking about Chinese furniture-making in particular, however, it’s hard for him to stop. Originally drawn to arts like painting and architecture, Nakashima-Brown said he became fascinated by classical Chinese furniture after coming across the book, Chinese Domestic Furniture by Gustav Ecke, while at a colleague’s studio in New York. He then hunted down more literature on the topic, including The Journal of the Classical Chinese Furniture Society published by the Fellowship of Friends, decades ago.
“There was something about it that really captivated me,” he said, and then he began to notice that much of the old-style European furniture was actually a strange interpretation of those old Ming chairs and other works.
Hugo Nakashima-Brown's furniture and wood sculptures on display at Harvard Ed Portal’s Crossings Gallery in Allston. Photos by Adam Smith
“I started to notice that when we’re talking about Roman influences … (that) all this stuff looks like Chinese furniture.”
At some point, he said, he believes old Chinese-inspired European furniture was then reproduced at request in China to create a sort of distorted – and often convoluted – version of itself.
“It’s like something that was Xeroxed too many times,” he said. At some point, he said, the original Chinese elements seen in early American furniture – which was mainly a copy of British furniture – were then dismissed.
“It went from a fantasy about what you admired to something that was denigrated,” he said, especially during the era of the Opium Wars.
Today, said the furniture-maker, his goal is to find ways to more easily reproduce hard-to-create pieces of classical furniture with computer-assisted technology to make hybrid-hand-made and CAD-made works that are more affordable than custom-made works. He recently received a small grant from the International Furnishings Design Association to help in the study of old joint-making techniques. He plans to use the funds to create a set of model joints used in Asia long ago.
“It’s very hard to understand how to put these together,” he said.
But while the furniture maker is meticulous about the details and history of his profession, he’s also got a sense of humor. In fact, he describes some of his works on display at the Harvard gallery as tongue-in-cheek.
One example is a marquetry – or veneer design – of America’s first president George Washington, that he calls “sort of androgynous.” He said about the work depicting the man who could supposedly never tell a lie: Nakashima-Brown was compelled to make part of the wood sculpture ... “of course, of cherry wood.”
“Familiar Faces | Living Spaces” shows at Harvard Ed Portal’s Crossings Gallery in Allston. The show, on display through Oct. 23, will have an opening reception the evening of Sept. 18.