trying to buy a bookshelf/room divider feels so fucking pointless. it's a quest in futility. there's nothing worth getting, not at any price, and you know why? it's because 60-some odd years ago, god damned George Nakashima made this thing:
Look at this fucking infohazard of a piece of furniture.
Look at how fucking perfectly proportioned each and every void space is to create a subtle sense of motion and elevation, almost a landscape with just a few careful lines.
Look at how the reduction in the support pillars from left to right mirrors that ascension and proportion. How the different woods highlight each other and the near-seamless points at which they meet. How the shadowed interior boards bring out the bright highlights in the grain of the shelves and top piece.
Look at how it fits into a room, how it casts a shadow, and most importantly, how it perfectly frames and hilights every single thing placed on it.
Like. It's not some wild statement to claim that the man who defined an entire genre of woodworking and furniture making, crystalized in his book "the soul of a tree", is like. A human god of the art form. I get that i'm saying nothing revolutionary here. But this thing just. breaks me. nothing compares. i've spent years trying to find a bookshelf that can even hold the faintest candle to it. I've spent long nights up in cad modeling out my own versions based on his design, desperately wanting to take them down to the woodshop and try my hand, but like. one real, good look at this, and it's so clearly the result of decades of craftsmanship. a lifetime of the art. i love it. it ruined this type of furniture for me, and i love it so, so much.
I'll just have to stick to desks, the one thing I know Mr. Nakashima will never ruin for m-
...
fuck.
