Farewell to Sam Maloof

Sam Maloof dies at 93; designer and builder of simple, beautiful furniture

Sam Maloof, a designer and woodworker whose furniture was initially prized for its simplicity and practicality by Southern Californian homeowners in the 1950s and later valued for its beauty and timelessness by collectors, museum curators and U.S. presidents, has died. He was 93.

Maloof, whose career began six decades ago just as the American modernism movement was becoming popular, put usefulness before artistry and turned down multimillion-dollar offers to mass-produce his original designs. He worked out of his home workshop, shaping hardwood, one part at a time, into rocking chairs, cradles and hutches that were shorn of unnecessary adornments.

His hi-fi cabinets, cork-top coffee tables and other modern pieces were instantly praised by home magazine editors and trend-setting interior designers. His walnut chairs and bar stools were installed in several of the so-called Case Study Houses -- the modernist, experimental homes in the Los Angeles area built between 1945 and 1966 by Richard Neutra, Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen and other progressive architects.

Even after Maloof was recognized as an influential pioneer of contemporary California decor, and even as his furniture was reselling for 100 times its original price, Maloof referred to himself simply as a "woodworker."

"He was trying to make other people appreciate what it was like to live with a handcrafted object in which there was a kind of union between maker, object and owner," said Jeremy Adamson, who wrote "The Furniture of Sam Maloof," published in 2001 to coincide with a retrospective exhibition of Maloof's work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C.

President Carter, a woodwork hobbyist and friend who visited Maloof's home, signed a photograph "to my woodworking hero."

Carter and subsequent presidents used Maloof's signature rocking chairs in the White House. Elongated rockers on the chairs look sculptural, like an archer's bow, but they were made for a very practical reason: to keep the chairs from tipping over.

"Ray Charles couldn't see my furniture," Maloof told a reporter. "But he said he could feel that it had soul. When he asked about my rocker [at a friend's house], his host told him, 'That's a chair made by Sam Maloof.' Ray ran his hands over the wood shouting, 'I know this man! I know this man!' On his next visit, the first thing Ray Charles said was, 'I'd like to touch that furniture again that Sam Maloof made.' "

He was described by the Smithsonian Institution as "America's most renowned contemporary furniture craftsman" and People magazine dubbed him "The Hemingway of Hardwood." But his business card always said "woodworker."

"I like the word," he once said, his eyes brightening behind large, owl-eyed glass frames. "It's an honest word."

I am so glad that I had the opportunity to meet him. He was a lovely person.