The Soul of a Tree: A Master Woodworker’s Reflections, George Nakashima 1981

A combination memoir, art book, and how-to-do-it craft book by one of America’s premier furniture makers.  Nakashima, born to native Japanese in Spokane, WA in 1905 graduated from the University of Washington in architecture and received an M.A. from MIT.  He lived in Pondicherry, India on an ashram, in Tokyo and in an internment camp in Idaho before settling in New Hope, PA where he built his studio, raised his 2 children, and did his remarkable work.  Lovely homage to the beauty of craft and the wonder of trees—burls, grain, roots, boules, sawing through-and-through, hand planing and sharpening the blade after every stroke.  This is a beautiful book!