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09 July 2007
Wood Craftsman Sam Maloof Still “Loving It” at 91
“I hope my furniture has a soul to it,” California artist says
Washington -- A renowned 91-year-old furniture-maker who never attended university recently delivered a commencement address at Mount San Antonio College in California, inviting students to see a way to build their lives through the process of building a chair.
Begin with the legs, said Sam Maloof, the most famous woodworker in the United States. “They are the foundation. They hold you up like values, principles, beliefs.”
Next, Maloof likened choosing the arms to choosing friends wisely, and the seat back to what keeps a person upright, steady and looking straight ahead toward his or her goals.
Even in his 90s, the man deemed a “living treasure” by the legislature of California continues to work at his trade six days a week, from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and says he is still “loving it.” He has a backlog of orders from all over the world that will keep him busy until he is 105.
Maloof said he believes his work still is getting better. “It comes from within,” he said. “There’s a lot of work being done today that doesn’t have any soul in it. The technique may be the utmost perfection, yet it is lifeless. It doesn’t have a soul. I hope my furniture has a soul to it.”
Born in 1916 in Chino, California, Maloof was the seventh of nine children born to Lebanese immigrants. Entirely self-taught, he sells his most popular creations -- his signature rocking chair and baby cradle -- to customers around the world. No two pieces of furniture are exactly the same. Three U.S. presidents have owned a rocking chair -- Presidents Carter, Reagan and Clinton -- and both rocker and cradle are famous for the silken feel of the wood and for swinging gracefully with a light touch. Maloof typically finishes one handcrafted piece per week, and the rocking chair and the baby cradle are very expensive to purchase.
"I let the wood guide me," Maloof recently told a local California newspaper, the Daily Bulletin. "If a client comes in with a drawing and says this is what I want you to make, I say: ‘Sorry. You can tell me how big you want something or whether you want the back soft or hard, but I need to have a free hand.’”
Maloof still puts everything together himself, although he has taken on three apprentices who will carry on the business when he retires or dies. In the 1960s, he refused an offer of $22 million for the right to mass-produce his designs. From the time he was 10 -- when he made a breadboard so that his mother could take her homemade Arab bread from the oven without burning herself -- until today, Maloof never has made anything he did not design himself.
His workshop is located in Alta Loma, California, at his home, now known as the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation (named for his late wife, Alfreda, who died in 1998). The handmade wooden home was declared a historic site by the state of California and moved three miles to its current location to make way for a freeway. Filled with Maloof's unique furniture, unusual door latches and a widely photographed spiral staircase of his own design, the structure was built room by room over 40 years as he earned the money for materials. It will become a museum on his death and even now has a new education center and gallery where he and his second wife, Beverly, display not only Maloof’s work but also paintings, sculpture, pottery and fabric art by other artists.
He considers himself a craftsman rather than an artist, despite the fact his work has been displayed in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and Philadelphia’s Museum of Art. Early breakthrough exhibitions in the 1960s and 1970s included California Design in Pasadena, California, Objects USA at the Smithsonian Institution and In Praise of Hands, presented by the World Crafts Council.
But when he talks about his craft, Maloof sounds like an artist: "I do not feel that it is possible to make a working drawing with all the intricate and fine details that go into a chair or stool, particularly. Many times, I do not know how a certain area is to be done until I start working with a chisel, rasp or whatever tool is needed for that particular job," he said.
In 1985, Maloof became the first craftsman to be awarded a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation, which gave him $375,000.
In discussing an exhibition of his work for the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in 2001, Maloof concluded: “It’s been a lot of fun. How many people are doing what they really love to do?”
Characteristic Maloof works can be viewed at the online exhibition of the Oceanside Museum of Art.
The traveling exhibition Craft in America (based on the TV series of the same name) includes some of Maloof’s work, which is also in numerous public and private collections, including the White House Collection of Arts and Crafts. One hundred thirty works from the exhibition are included in the virtual exhibition Craft in America.
For additional information, see “Maloof in Action” on the Web site of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
