Interesting Estate Sale of a Woodworker Around The Corner

[Jim Becker]

My neighbor Mary texted me earlier today about an estate sale around the corner from our street...apparently a deceased woodworker. But not just "a woodworker"; rather, it was an Italian man who started his career working for George Nakashima before going out on his own for the last 60+ years. The house was pretty well picked over but if I had a place for it, the dining table and chairs would have come home with me. This man's work was very strongly influenced by Nakashima and there apparently were quite a few actual Nakashima pieces in the home prior to yesterday when Rago (auctioneer in Lambertville NJ who has a lot of Nakashima expertise) picked them up. The house also had a lot of hand carved doors and other features that were wonderful...even though the house itself is rather dated, etc. (It will be an as-is RE sale as it turns out)

Out back was the shop and from the outside, the building sat in to the landscape nicely. The man's son, Gino, said that NOBODY was ever allowed in there...not even his mother who was married to the woodworker. Gino also said that his dad would be beside himself with all the people looking through his stuff, especially because there were a lot of people who couldn't even spell "wood" or "tool". (really) I do think that the building was repurposed long ago as it seemed like it might have been either added on to at a separate level or had provisions for livestock. Who knows...it was open and had lots of light. Here's a pano from one end on the slightly raised upper level.

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Spied on a shelf was this seat for a Nakashima Mira chair...it was in very poor condition, so I left it there. But wait until the last photo.

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And then there was this chair design which is identical to the chairs in that dining room I mentioned above. These get natural woven seats and backs made from rope...there were several spools of the stuff in the shop. You can see the Nakashima influence there.

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No good estate sale goes without some form of humor...

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I did not walk away without anything. While the shop was very picked over, I did grab a couple of gouges in formats I don't have and...this Nakashima Mira design chair. While it's not an "official" one, it's got all the elements and I have a place for it once I clean it up and restore it. It also gives me a reference model for the set of them that I started in 2003 and plan on getting back on soon. BTW, those three items cost me $30.

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I may go back in the next couple of days to paw through the remaining lumber but it's all scrap and shorts and given my current storage setup, I'd have to be selective.