Sam Maloof

The woodworker who was a master craftsman

1916–2009

Sam Maloof, who has died at 93, for decades was considered one of the nation’s most innovative furniture designers. His objects’ practicality and simplicity were prized not only by home­owners but by collectors and museums. Several U.S. presidents used his signature creation—a rocking chair with elongated, backward-jutting rockers to keep it steady—in the White House.

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Born to Lebanese immigrant parents in the Southern California farming community of Chino, Maloof carved wooden toys as a child, said the Associated Press. In 1947, after getting a graphic arts degree and serving in the Army, he began building furniture out of “discarded fir plywood and oak shipping crates” for himself and his wife, Alfreda, “because they could not afford finished pieces.” Soon Maloof was making furniture for others. “Assembled entirely out of wood without nails or metal hardware, it fit handsomely into the minimalist homes of the postwar era.” Within two years, “Better Homes & Gardens had published photographs and plans of his furniture to show readers how to decorate economically.”

Maloof’s tables, chairs, hutches, cabinets, and other pieces were minimalist masterpieces, “shorn of unnecessary adornments,” said the Los Angeles Times. Rarely making more than 100 pieces annually, he employed a simple technique. “Instead of following plans, Maloof matched an image in his head. He would then refine the shape with hand tools to make the finished piece comfortable, functional, and beautiful.” Maloof’s work is in many permanent collections, including those of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Boston’s Museum of Fine Art. In 1985, he won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant—the first craftsman to be so honored. One of his biggest fans was Jimmy Carter, who gave him a photograph signed “to my favorite woodworking hero.”

Despite such accolades, Maloof never called himself anything other than a woodworker. “I like the word,” he said. “It’s an honest word.”