Children of the late internationally renowned woodworker and artist George Nakashima are carrying on the family business and fulfilling their father's dream of building an Altar for Peace for each of the world's six continents.

This week found the sister and brother team of Mira Nakashima-Yarnall and Kevin Nakashima sawing a 13-foot black walnut log with the expert assistance of Rick Johnson, who worked on the first peace altar installed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and John Kirlew of Furlong.

The group will spend the remainder of the week in Doylestown Township sawing a ISO-year-old English walnut log 60 inches in diameter procured by logger Frank Koziosky of Gardenville, who has worked with the Nakashimas for more than 25 years. The tree is from Pennsylvania.

The lumber for the altar will dry in storage for three or four years, according to Mira.

"My father, George Nakashima, who passed away in June 1990, was so inspired by the acquisition and monumental sawing of a great walnut log that he had a vision, a dream, to build an Altar for Peace in each of the six continents of the world—a symbol of "joyous peace, not a fear or absence of war...a surrender to the Divine Consciousness to end in a most beautiful aura of love," wrote daughter Mira, who is chief officer of the Nakashima foundation, "Objects for Peace," formed in 1985 and is the only designer.

Her mother Marion, family matriarch and president and vice president of the foundation, was present Tuesday afternoon to witness the sawing of the log.

It was also George's dream.that his grandchildren work in the family business. All four of Mira's children have been involved in the business at some time. They are Satoru, who was born in Japan and is living in Seattle, Wash.; Maria, who is working toward her master's degree in architecture at the University of California at Berkley; Shanti, who is studying at Stanford University to be a doctor; and Misha, who is attending the University of Rochester.

According to Mira, her father worked for years before he passed away to negotiate for a peace altar in what was then the Soviet Union.

Mira's friend and liaison to the former Soviet Union, Irene Goldman, just returned from the newly formed Commonwealth of Independent States, where she delivered a letter from Mira concerning the second peace altar.

Goldman visited the site at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow and was assured that a peace altar is "need ed now more than ever."

Irene and Mira traveled to the Soviet Union in the fall of 1990 and received a proposal from the Academy of Sciences the following July to place a peace table in its exhibition hall.

Before Goldman returned this week with the good news, Mira was concerned about the instability of the Russian situation and whether the academy still had use for the altar.

Wood from an American Black Walnut tree has been in storage for several years for the Moscow peace altar, according to Mira.

The first peace altar, measuring about 10.5 feet by 10.5 feet by 3 feet and weighing approximately three quarters of a ton, was installed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Dec. 31,1986.

About the tree for the first altar, Nakashima said: "I believed this was a once in a lifetime tree—a 300-year-old American black walnut found on Long Island in New York. In my dream, I saw this tree as a giant table—an altar for peace—which would be an instrument of conciliation, of bringing people together. When I awoke, I wrote the dream down on paper and soon began sketching designs of this altar." "We have plenty of wood for several altars," Nakashima said in 1985, as reported by Charles Shaw, the late editor emeritus of The New Hope Gazette. "The decision we have to make is to determine what sites are best and which places would welcome such altars'

Future sites for altars may include Brazil, where a global forum on ecology will be held in June 1992 and Pondicherry, India, where George Nakashima, a self-described "Hindu Catholic, lived after earning his architectural degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and traveling extensively for seven years. In India he studied with a spiritual leader and the relationship had an profound influence on his life.

The ecology conference would be an appropriate site for an altar, according to his daughter, because her father was honored for his "reverence for nature" during a testimonial dinner at the American Craft Museum in May 1989.

"The ultimate creative concept of this presence becomes a prime decision. Too often great trees are chopped up into knife handles or pistol grips. The only full destiny of a noble tree, favored to grow as none of its peers were able to do, is to use it in its full length and width," Nakashima said to Shaw in October 1986.

"Even though my father is here in spirit only, the family and committee would like his dream to be realized as a tribute to his life and work," Mira wrote.