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See Where America’s Most Celebrated Furniture Maker Lived and Worked
January 27, 2016
East of Los Angeles in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains sits a remarkable tribute to the art and craft of furniture-making. It’s the historic home and workshop of celebrated modernist furniture designer and maker Sam Maloof. For more than half a century, Maloof in his home studio sculpted elegant works that are esteemed by museum curators, collectors and artisans alike.
Sunday, January 24, is the centennial of the late Maloof’s birth, and a yearlong program of events is planned at the Rancho Cucamonga, California, compound — now a museum open year-round — and beyond. Learn about the man Jimmy Carter called “the best woodworker that ever lived” and walk with us through the art-filled house and studio the master craftsman built for himself and his family.
Photos courtesy of the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts except where noted
Maloof was considered the foremost American woodworker of his time. The Chino, California-born son of Lebanese immigrants taught himself woodworking and slowly built his furniture-making business with the help of his first wife, Alfreda Ward Maloof. Starting in the 1950s and until his death in 2009 at age 93, Maloof produced about 5,000 handcrafted furniture pieces for homes, offices, places of worship and public institutions.
His work helped elevate the standing of crafts in the art world when in 1985, he became the first craft artist and woodworker to receive a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. Today his pieces are in the collections of museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2012, one of his rocking chairs sold at auction for more than $80,000.
One of Maloof’s most impressive works is the house he built up over the years from an existing 800-square-foot bungalow to the sprawling two-story, 22-room structure it is today. It was an ongoing project starting in the 1950s, when he and his young family moved to Rancho Cucamonga, and it was constructed mostly without a design plan with help from relatives and studio assistants.
In the 1990s, after the 210 Freeway was approved to run through his property, supporters rose up to help move the house and studio a few miles to its current location. Today it operates as the nonprofit Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is one of more than 30 properties in the National Trust’s Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios program, which includes the residences of other artists such as Grant Wood, Winslow Homer, Jackson Pollock and Georgia O’Keeffe.
A Maloof rocking chair, one of his signature works, in 1981 became the first piece of handcrafted contemporary American furniture to enter the White House collection. As with other Maloof pieces, his rocking chairs evolved over time, becoming more sleek and sculpted. Early versions had upholstered seats; later seats were made of shaped hardwood, often walnut. Maloof and his assistants assembled his furniture without nails or metal hardware and hand-rubbed the pieces with a blend of linseed oil, raw tung oil and semigloss urethane varnish.
Photo courtesy of Gene Sasse
Photo courtesy of Gene Sasse
The Maloof house showcases many handcrafted details the woodworker borrowed from furniture-making, such as the whimsical handles, latches and hinges seen here on a door.
Maloof and his family welcomed as many as 3,000 visitors a year to their home, including friends, fellow artists and prospective furniture buyers. With Maloof’s works filling the house and his craftsmanship on display on every surface, the entire home was a showroom for his art. Maloof was a warm and generous host and enjoyed getting to know and working with his clients. “I want to be able to work a piece of wood into an object that contributes something beautiful and useful to everyday life,” Maloof once said. “And I want to do this for an individual that I can come to know as a friend.”
Harold B. Nelson, curator of American Decorative Arts for the Huntington Library in nearby San Marino, California, worked with Maloof before the artist’s death to produce a 2011-12 Huntington exhibition of his and his peers’ work. The House that Sam Built: Sam Maloof and Art in the Pomona Valley, 1945-1985 told the story of the network of postwar artists and artisans near Claremont, California, in which Maloof and his wife Alfreda played a key role.
We spoke with Nelson, who reflects on his time exploring the Maloof oeuvre: “Sam Maloof was one of the most masterful craftsman I have ever known. However, what I began to realize … was that his work was not only about superb execution, comfort and elegance. It was, more importantly, about the friendships that ensued between Sam and his clients. Each piece he created is a manifestation or embodiment of those close human bonds and friendships. And that’s what makes his work, I feel, so compelling and so enduringly meaningful.”
Public tours of the home visit the Maloof kitchen and living areas, which remain much as they were when the family lived there. Seen here is a spiral staircase that Maloof made by hand.
As part of the centennial celebration, more of Maloof’s artwork, as well as pieces by other artists in the Maloof collection, can be seen in a new exhibition opening February 14. Sam Maloof Woodworker: Life/Art/Legacy will be displayed in a gallery on the property through August 31.
The show will be organized into four areas focusing on his art, mentors, innovations and impact. It will look at Maloof’s relationships with art and design figures such as Charles Eames and Henry Dreyfuss, and celebrity clients Gene Kelly, Irving Wallace, James Garner and others. And through displays of works by friends and colleagues including Tony Abeyta, Laura Andreson, Paul Darrow, Phil Dike, Harrison McIntosh, Maria Martinez, Shiko Munakata, Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Kay Sekimachi, Robert Stocksdale, Millard Sheets, Paul Soldner and Marguerite Wildenhain it will explore the ways in which the artists may have influenced one another.
Also for the centennial, a new book, Sam Maloof: 36 Views of a Master Woodworker, by Fred Setterberg, will be published this spring by Heyday in conjunction with the foundation. Author Setterberg weaves together the words of Maloof family members, friends and associates to present a personal, multifaceted portrait of the artist as a member of and contributor to his community.
Cover photo by Jim McHugh
One of Maloof’s most devoted fans — and a centennial advisor — is Jimmy Carter, a lifelong woodworker himself. He learned of Maloof’s work through Fine Woodworking magazine, and he owns several Maloof pieces. The two spent time together in Southern California and Georgia talking about woodworking and Middle East politics.
“I had a very intimate, almost a brotherly relationship with Sam Maloof,” Carter is quoted as saying in the book. “There wouldn’t be more than five or six other people in the world who have had a greater direct effect on my self-analysis, my deliberate effort to learn something from them and apply it to my own life.”
Maloof shared books and instructional videos with Carter, who studied them and solicited advice on woodworking. “When Sam built something that had concealed parts, like the back end of a drawer or the underneath of a cabinet, you didn’t have to worry about the back side being inferior in quality or appearance,” Carter said. “You just knew when Maloof finished something, it would be perfect all the way through. It’d be the best he could do.”
Carter’s appreciation for Maloof goes beyond his woodworking skills. “He was a person admirable in all his characteristics,” Carter said. “He was a philosopher. He was deeply committed to basic moral values. I really have been inspired by Sam.”
In this photo taken at the Maloof home, Carter dines with the family, including Maloof’s wife Alfreda, standing; then-daughter-in-law Kathryn Golden, foreground; Maloof; and son Slimen Maloof.
Maloof met Alfreda in 1947 at Scripps College in Claremont, where he worked for a time as an assistant to Millard Sheets, the well-known artist and head of the art department. They married in 1948. Alfreda, who had a degree from UCLA and had wanted to be an artist, taught at the Santa Fe Indian School in New Mexico before marrying Maloof. Her interest in Native American arts and textiles can be seen in collections throughout the home.
The two were married for 50 years until her death in 1998. Maloof and others credit Alfreda, pictured here, for encouraging him to venture out on his own as a woodworker and for managing their home and the business. Three years after Alfreda died, Maloof married longtime friend Beverly Wingate, who currently resides in a second house on the property.
On display in the home’s showroom is a Maloof natural-edge burled walnut table, pictured here. On it are wood bowls made by his friend Bob Stocksdale, and works by Stocksdale’s wife, fiber artist Kay Sekimachi. Maloof and the couple would often trade pieces, as he did with other artisan friends. Maloof also acquired works by young artisans, boosting their careers.
Over the years, Maloof’s collection became known for its wide-ranging representation of Southern California midcentury art and crafts. Setterberg writes that Maloof’s collection at his death included about 2,000 art objects valued at $5 million to $6 million. Many pieces are loaned out for exhibitions nationwide.
A Maloof sofa from the 1950s calls to mind Danish modern design combined with Shaker craftsmanship. Maloof’s pieces found their way into many midcentury modern homes, their clean lines and handcrafted warmth complementing minimalist residences such as the experimental postwar Case Study Houses.
Maloof was part of a 1958 Los Angeles Times article profiling Southern California furniture designers that included, from left, Kipp Stewart, Rex Goode, Maloof, Stewart MacDougall, Hendrik Van Keppel, Taylor Green, John Keal, Barney Flagg and Ernest Inouye.
Photo by Dale Healy Photography
The Maloof shop still produces new pieces and renovates original Maloof works. Woodworker Mike Johnson runs the shop with son Stephen Johnson. Mike began working for Maloof in 1981, starting off sanding furniture and progressing to become a respected craftsman in his own right.
Resident artist and woodworker Larry White, who worked with Maloof for many years, teaches occasional master woodworking classes at the Maloof studio. The next all-day workshop is scheduled for Saturday, March 27, and includes a tour of the home, workshop, wood barn and showroom. White will share Maloof anecdotes and offer insights into Maloof’s craft, techniques, wood selection, joinery and tools.
Individual docent-led and group tours of the house, shop and woodshed are available year-round. The gardens and Jacobs Education Center galleries are open and free during exhibitions and public hours. Visit the foundation website, malooffoundation.org, for more information.
A special tour is being offered February 17 as part of Palm Springs Modernism Week. The all-day event includes a bus ride from Palm Springs to the compound, a private tour, an exhibition visit and lunch.
Plans are underway to tour the exhibition, with a stop at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan; the Smithsonian affiliate acquired a Maloof chair as the first object in its permanent collection. The Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, California, and the Modernism Museum in Mt. Dora, Florida, are also planning Maloof-related exhibitions in 2016.
Centennial events at the Maloof will include two other exhibitions: the third biennial Sculpture in the Garden exhibition, opening May 1; and California Wood Artists: Maloof and Beyond, featuring contemporary wood furniture, objects and sculpture, scheduled to run October 2, 2016, through February 11, 2017.
“Sam Maloof is well known for his woodworking, and for his furniture, and for reflecting a certain aesthetic and energy and spirit of California modernism. I think that’s the starting point for a lot of people who come to the Maloof foundation and see the house in which Sam lived his life and the workshop in which he spent his time,” says Jim Rawitsch, executive director of the foundation, in an interview.
“And a lightbulb goes on, and you see that it’s not just about the product that comes out of that process, but it’s about choices in living. It’s about living an aesthetic life surrounding yourself with beauty, and connecting to the elements — to the earth, to the landscape, to the climate, to the world that is California,” Rawitsch says. “And letting yourself live in a setting that captures that, reflects that and takes energy and affirmation from that.”
Anne Colby January 23, 2016
Houzz Editorial Staff. Formerly Los Angeles Times Home editor and writer, and a senior editor at Home magazine. I’ve also written for publications including Bon Appetit, Woman’s Day, Sunset, Los Angeles and House Beautiful specials.
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