1978 George Nakashima Lamp with Letters
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GUEST:
This lamp belonged to my father-in-law. He was a builder. He furnished his homes, his model homes, with Nakashima furniture. He loved George Nakashima for the free form. After that, he put the furniture in his house and it's been there ever since.
APPRAISER:
That's interesting. I've never heard of a model house that had Nakashima furniture in it. It was more typical that you would take furniture from a production house like Herman Miller that would be highly produced furniture to go in a model home. Nakashima furniture in a model home must have been a very clever marketing tool to sell the houses that he was developing.
GUEST:
Well, George Nakashima actually came down and did a photo shoot with him. So that was a large draw as well. It was good marketing.
APPRAISER:
These are typically made of a walnut root that Nakashima would pick out and create and send off, sometimes with a drawing, but it was really his own choice. And it was rare that a client would have a great deal of input in it. And what I particularly like is all of your letters and documentation on this particular lamp. You have some really beautiful drawings for an English walnut root, which Mr. Nakashima suggested to your father-in-law. Your father-in-law then wrote back saying, "Because I have another one in black walnut, I'd rather wait until you have some black walnut." And then George wrote again with another drawing, saying he found a walnut root, and again he drew a picture of it saying, "It's going to look something like this. Would this be okay?" Then of course your father said, "That sounds great. Let's go forward." So it was an awful lot to go through for a simple lamp base, but it shows a little bit about how dedicated Mr. Nakashima was and your father-in-law was to George Nakashima's aesthetic. Many times Mr. Nakashima sent a carbon copy of his drawings and a carbon copy of his letters. He kept the originals. But these are pencil on paper. So these are original drawings by Mr. Nakashima. In that context, if you put this together with the lamp, if it was sold, I think it would set a record price for this model. A number of these style lamps come up on the marketplace, but this one is particularly nice. Highly figured root wood, with lots of cracks and lots of crevices, lots of free edges, lots of cuts. This was something that was created by a master woodworker. The way the stem of the lamp comes through this very thin, elegant piece of the root here-- you can see it peeking through-- is an artist's touch that you don't see in most examples. The other thing it has going for it is spectacular condition. The walnut root, the black walnut sides, the holly and this very fragile fiberglass shade is all in spectacular condition. Have you ever thought about how much this might be worth?
GUEST:
The collection was appraised, but not this individual piece.
APPRAISER:
How much was the entire collection appraised for?
GUEST:
63 pieces, $380,000. Approximately.
APPRAISER:
If you had to guess, what do you think something like this would be?
GUEST:
You know, $1,500?
APPRAISER:
$1,500. That's a substantial amount more than what it sold for in 1978. There's an original receipt here that says that this lamp sold for $245 in 1978. In today's market, a average example sells for between $6,000 to $8,000.
GUEST:
Oh, my gosh.
APPRAISER:
This is far better than an average example. I would estimate it at $8,000 to $10,000 at auction. And I think the high end of that estimate is a very easy number for me to imagine it selling for.
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