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Please note:
The following article appeared in february of 2000, The Nakashima
Commemorative Martin guitar is sold out.
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C F. Martin honors
master woodworker George Nakashima with Commemorative Edition
Guitar
Woodworker Nakashima
gives shape to dream The
Sounding Board
The Official Newletter of the
Martin
Guitar Company
Volume 8 * February 2000
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George Nakashima's extraordinary furniture designs are on display in many of the finest museums and homes around the world.
Inspired by his love of Japanese fine craftwmanship and simplicity of design, this American-born son of a struggling newspaper reporter created distinctive designs from a variety of ancient woods. Influenced by the time he spent working in Paris, Tokyo,and India following his college degree in architecture, Nakashima developed a unique appreciation for working with wood from the trees that he loved so dearly. Nakashima and his American-born wife Marion Okahima, had just opened a furniture workshop in Seattle when World War II started. Like other Japanese Americans, they were interned in a camp before being allowed to move to rural southeastern Pennsylvania. By 1946, he had created the beginnings of a craft furniture business. His striking designs, superb craftmanship and use of organic materials soon earned him a lasting international reputation. He is widely  heralded as the founding father of the comtemporary American woodworking movement. George Nakashima died in 1990 at age 85, but his woodworking studio and artistic legacy are carried on to this day by his daughter, Mira Nakashima Yarnall.
For the last two decades of his life, George Nakashima visited the C. F. Martin "Sawmill" on a regular basis to supervise the cutting of his rare oversized walnut logs, which were perfectly suited for cutting on Martin's state of the art bandmill. In honor of his extraordinary and unparalleled skill in crafting objects of wood, and as a testimonial to the long and warm relationship between the Nakashima family and the  Martin Guitar Company, Martin is honored to introduce the George Nakashima Claro Walnut Commemorative Edition. This acoustic Dreadnought guitar is designed in the woodworking style of this great artist and limited to a maximum of 100 instruments.
The sides and two piece back are bookmatched from highly figured Claro walnut, perhaps Nakashima's most favorite species of wood.
The panels of the back are joined with two of Nakashima's trademark dovetailed "butterflies" fashioned from East Indian rosewood. The neck combines two pieces of flamed maple with a thin contrasting walnut center strip. The Nakashima Family Crest, a five petal Japanese ivy leaf, is nested on the Claro walnut headplate beneath Martin's script logo. Both designs are painstakingly inlaid in mother of pearl. The fingerboard inlays are also derived from the Nakashima family crest, a full crest at the 5th fret, two petals at the 7th and 12th frets, a single petal at the 9th, and small floral centers at the 15th and 17th frets. Nakashima's signature is delicately inlaid between the 19th and 20th frets.
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Both the fingerboard and the bridge are crafted from the highest quality genuine black ebony. Tuning machines are nickel plated open geared Waverlys with butterbean knobs.
The soundboard is bookmatched from rare Italian alpine spruce, adorned with a single rosette ring of highly colorful abalone pearl. Scalloped top braces are shifted forward to a position one inch from the soundhole for optimum tone. The soft appearance of the instrument is enhanced with a light aging toner on the top and a satin lacquer finish throughout. The pickguard is polished and beveled from material that closely matches the vintage tortoise pickguard coloration of the pre-war era. A black nut and saddle contrast with fossilized ivory bridge and endpins, inlaid with large 5mm black pearl dots. Included with each Nakashima Commemorative guitar is a custom-made vintage Geib StyleTM hardshell case with a taupe tweed exterior and a green crushed velour interior.
An interior label, personally signed by Mira Nakashima Yarnall and Martin Chairman and CEO, C. F. Martin IV, is numbered in sequence with the edition total (i.e. 1 of 100, 2 of 100, etc.). A secondary label features a classic Jack Rosen photograph of George Nakashima and the japanese symbol "Wa" which means "peace."
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of each Nakashima Commemorative guitar will be donated to The Nakashima Foundation For Peace.
Martin Guitar dealers will begin to take orders for the Nakashima Commemorative Martin guitars immediately, though the edition will not begin to appear in stores until the summer of 2000.
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Attn: Mira Nakashima Yarnall
1847 Aquetong Road
New Hope, PA 18938
It was George Nakashima's
dream to provide "tables of peace"
for each of the seven continents on
earth. Constructed from a
magnificent bookmatch of Claro
walnut, the first "Peace Altar" was
consecrated and installed at the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine in
New York City in 1986. The second
table, built to celebrate the 50th
Anniversary of the United Nations in
1995, 
was made from the same monumental
black walnut tree as
the first and blessed at the same
Cathedral. After serving its mission
as a unifying presence at The Hague
Appeal for Peace in May of 1999, it
will reside in the newly renovated
Russian Academy of Art in Moscow
to help inspire peace in the new
millennium. A third table, built and
sent to India in 1996, has found a
permanent home in the "City of
Peace" Auroville, which sprang
from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in
Pondicherry, where George
Nakashima was once a disciple.
George Nakashima believed
that through the gifting of concrete
symbols of peace-tables formed by
nature, aspiring to the Divine
worked by human hands and
consecrated to peace, universal
peace might some day permeate the
entire globe.
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