Mira Nakashima does not command attention in the usual way. Soft-spoken and small in stature, she moves quietly through the wooded Solebury campus her father created, carrying a legacy of extraordinary scale with little interest in personal grandeur.

While Mira’s presence may be gentle, her words carry enormous weight among the craftspeople who sustain George Nakashima’s work. She is the living link between her father’s vision and the designers and craftspeople who continue that work today, preserving a place shaped by reverence for nature, craftsmanship, and spiritual purpose.

For designers such as Zane Shalchi, even ordinary tasks can be a reminder of how closely that work remains connected to nature. “It’s just a joy every time we get to wet the wood down and stare at the beautiful colors,” he says. “None of us take it for granted.”

At the center of the process is Mira, an architect and designer who returned to New Hope in 1970. Now in her 80s, she continues to design furniture, select wood, and guide the studio’s creative direction.

“I never really felt there was a huge difference between what Dad wanted and what I was doing,” she says. “I tried to make sure there wasn’t a huge difference.”

The Yoga of Doing

The calm order of the campus conceals the complicated path by which George arrived at woodworking. Born in Spokane, Washington, in 1905 to Japanese immigrant parents, he studied forestry and architecture before traveling abroad. While working for architect Antonin Raymond in India, he became a disciple of spiritual teacher Sri Aurobindo and was drawn to karma yoga, “the yoga of doing,” a spiritual practice rooted in action. “It is a spiritual practice realized through doing something, making things, and putting your spirit into what you’re making,” Mira says.

That belief became inseparable from his woodworking, which he saw as a relationship among the tree, designer, craftsperson, and person who would live with it.

George later met Marion Okajima in Tokyo. They settled in Seattle, where Mira was born in 1942. While she was still an infant, the family was forced from the West Coast and incarcerated at Minidoka, in the Idaho desert. The upheaval stripped the family of their home and freedom at the beginning of Mira’s life, an experience that would remain part of the family’s story long after they left the camp. There, Japanese carpenter Gentaro Hikogawa taught George about traditional hand tools and joinery. Raymond later helped secure the family’s release and brought them to Bucks County.

Growing Up Nakashima

For Mira, Bucks County became home almost immediately. She remembers playing in sawdust and making toys from wood scraps. “I didn’t really consider it art,” she says. “It was just stuff that I did.”

Before George completed their first house, the Nakashimas lived in a tent without running water. Mira remembers carrying soap to Ingham Creek to wash and being carried across patches of poison ivy by her father. “We lived pretty rough,” she says.

After Minidoka, even the hardship carried a sense of joy. In one surviving letter, Marion described the family playing “in the creek in the cold, clear water,” adding simply, “We’re free.”

Mira’s childhood was also shaped by her godmother, Mildred “Millie” Johnstone, whom she met in a New Hope bookstore. Johnstone invited her home, and Mira’s parents simply let her go. “No toothbrush or anything,” Mira says. When the family had little money, Johnstone became a devoted presence in Mira’s life, arranging lessons and later taking her to the Bach Festival. “Bless her heart,” Mira says. “She just took such good care of me growing up.”

Johnstone’s connection to the family continued throughout her life. She eventually had part of her home redesigned and furnished entirely in Nakashima pieces.

Finding Her Place

Gifted in mathematics and fascinated by languages, Mira entered Radcliffe College thinking of studying linguistics, but George had other plans. “My dad said to me, ‘No. You’re going to study architecture,’” she says.

After graduating from Harvard University in 1963, Mira studied at Waseda University in Japan. Still learning the language and lacking drafting experience, she relied on classmate Tetsu Amagasu for help. Their friendship became a romance—she married her first husband, Amagasu; started a family; and moved to Pittsburgh.

Several years later, George invited them back to New Hope. According to Mira, he asked, “Would you like to come home? I’m building you a house. And I bought some land across the road.” Mira’s response was simple: “It was an offer we couldn’t refuse.”

When they returned in 1970, Marion put Mira to work typing order cards. Her architectural training soon gave her another role: translating George’s small sketches into detailed drawings the craftspeople could use.

Over time, Mira’s work expanded beyond interpreting her father’s designs. The studio continues to make George’s furniture, preserving the forms and philosophy he established, but Mira has also created designs of her own using the same materials, techniques, and attention to each piece of wood. Among them is the Concordia chair, designed with classical musicians in mind and one she considers distinctly her own. She sees her work as part of a tradition in which innovation grows from knowledge of what came before.

‘We’ve Got to Keep Going’

That long apprenticeship took on new meaning after George’s death in 1990. He left behind a backlog of orders, many well-organized stacks of lumber, and a staff accustomed to his leadership. Suddenly, Mira and the senior craftspeople had to determine how to move forward without him. “The head men in the shop and I looked at each other and said, ‘OK, I guess we’ve got to keep going,’” Mira says.

One of the studio’s most daunting commitments was recreating the Nakashima collection of longtime clients Dr. and Mrs. Krosnick after their Princeton home burned down. Mira wanted to fulfill her father’s promise to replace it. The commission became one of her first tests as the studio’s leader.

“Mrs. Krosnick was here like every week for three years,” Mira says. “It was really good training for me because it was right after Dad passed away, and I thought, Mrs. Krosnick is my trainer. I have to learn how to be patient.’”

The Work Continues

More than three decades later, Mira remains closely involved in design and wood selection. Her second husband, longtime Nakashima chairmaker Jonathan “Jon” Yarnall, is also part of the studio community. Preserving George’s legacy means protecting not only George’s furniture forms but the intention behind them, while leaving room for the work to evolve.

“The workers are working in harmony with the designers, and the designers are working in harmony with our clients,” Mira says. “There is a certain kind of communal energy which is imparted in each piece of furniture. And we hope that continues.”

Senior designer Jaysond Neill says the scent of the lumber room seems to fall over him when he opens the door. “You can close your eyes and just know where you are,” he says.

Mira remains a working designer, although leadership often interrupts the quiet work she hopes to accomplish. “Every day, I think I’m going to get drawing done,” she says. “But something else happens.”

In July, Mira returned to Japan with her 22-year-old grandson, Toshi Amagasu, for exhibitions devoted to George’s work. “It’s interesting that his recognition is still going on,” she says. “He’s been gone for 36 years.”

Mira returned there as the steward of her father’s work, accompanied by a grandson beginning to find his own place within the family story. Toshi works at the studio in sales and public relations and plans to study in Japan.

Altars for Peace

George’s work eventually extended beyond furniture. Inspired by a vision and a large black walnut tree, he conceived monumental altars as gathering places for meditation and prayer. The first was consecrated at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York in 1986. After his death, Mira and the Nakashima Foundation for Peace continued the project, placing Sacred Peace Tables in Russia and India.

For Mira, continuing her father’s legacy has never meant simply reproducing what he left behind. It means preserving the spirit with which he worked while making room for her own designs, new hands, new places, and another generation.

Lela Casey is the editor of New Hope & Solebury magazine and has been writing professionally for more than 15 years. She and her family live in Doylestown.

Photograph by Juan Vidal Photography