Sam Maloof Lounge Chair and Ottoman

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Sam Maloof Lounge Chair and Ottoman

About the Item

A sculptural black walnut lounge chair and accompanying foot stool by Sam Maloof. Excellent original condition, beautiful glow to original finish. Newly upholstered in black leather. Both pieces signed. Foot stool measures: 23.88" W, 19" H, 17.5" D. Sam Maloof: Born in Chino, California, Sam Maloof is a 1934 graduate of Chino High School. He worked as a graphic artist before being encouraged by his wife to pursue woodworking. Having no formal training in the field, he persevered through trial and error to become one of America’s preeminent makers of handcrafted furniture. Maloof was the first woodworker elected as a fellow of the American Craft Council and the first recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant. He was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 1985. Once of his rocking chairs-regarded by many craft artists as the most difficult type of furniture to make-was the first piece of contemporary furniture selected for the White House Collection in 1982. Kenneth R. Trapp and Howard Risatti Skilled Work: American Craft in the Renwick Gallery (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998) Sam Maloof is America’s best known contemporary furniture craftsman. While he is self-taught as a woodworker, both his name and his work are instantly recognizable. No other 20th century studio furniture maker has received as many awards for design and craftsmanship. In 1985 he was named a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow. He is the only craftsman to have received this coveted ?“genius” award. Sam Maloof was born in 1916 in Chino, California, to Lebanese immigrant parents. He began making furniture in 1949, after working as a graphic artist in industry, serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, and working as a studio assistant to the artist-designer Millard Sheets, of Claremont, California. During the 1950s, he was a key member of the innovative, Los Angeles-area modern design movement; his work was included in the annual ?“California Design” shows, as well as other exhibits of contemporary-style home furnishings. With its warm tones, hand-sculpted details, and simple, timeless designs, Maloof’s walnut furniture perfectly complemented the spare, open-plan interiors of the sleek, modernist Southern California residences built during that decade. Leading West Coast architects and decorators, as well as style-conscious homeowners, regularly ordered pieces from his small, one-man workshop, and his Classic design attracted nationwide attention in the press. In 1957 the American Craft Museum in New York launched its first exhibition of studio craft furniture, ?“Furniture by Craftsmen,” and Maloof was invited to participate. The same year, he also attended the first national conference of the American Crafts Council (ACC) at Asilomar, California. As crafts gained popularity and credibility on both coasts, Sam discovered he was part of a thriving national movement. At Asilomar, participants discovered their shared dedication to working with their hands in an increasingly technological society. Maloof soon emerged as a leader; he served for a quarter century as an ACC trustee and during that time spoke and wrote tirelessly to promote the moral and spiritual values of handcraftsmanship. In 1969 he expressed his credo: ?“I want to be able to work a piece of wood into an object that contributes something beautiful and useful to our everyday living. To be able to work with materials without destroying their natural beauty and warmth, to be able to work as we want-that is a God-given privilege.” By 1970, Sam Maloof was acknowledged to be a leading member of the first generation of post-World War II studio furniture makers. These pioneers shared an aesthetic based on a modernist reverence for the beauty of solid hardwoods, a love of simple, sculptural shapes, a rejection of applied ornament and historical style, and above all, a dedication to function. Their influence remains strong among the postmodern ?“second generation” of studio furniture makers, even though this group employs mixed materials, creates personally expressive or historically based pieces, and often rejects function. For this generation, the quality of Maloof’s work and the success of his business operation confirmed that woodworking was a viable way of life. Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum The Furniture of Sam Maloof, September 14, 2001-January 20, 2002 exhibition brochure (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2001).

Creator:
Sam Maloof (Maker)
Dimensions:
Height: 38 in (96.52 cm)Width: 29.13 in (74 cm)Depth: 31.5 in (80.01 cm)Seat Height: 15 in (38.1 cm)
Sold As:
Set of 2
Style:
Mid-Century Modern (Of the Period)
Materials and Techniques:
Leather,Walnut
Place of Origin:
United States
Period:
Mid-20th Century
Date of Manufacture:
1960s
Condition:
Reupholstered. New leather upholstery. Original finish to frame with very light wear.
Seller Location:
Fulton, CA
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU5539221764722

Shop All Sam Maloof

Sam Maloof

Along with George Nakashima and Wendell Castle, the woodworker Sam Maloof was a guiding spirit of the American Studio furniture movement — a postwar revival of craftsmanship fueled by a reverence for skilled labor and a disdain for mass-produced furnishings composed of plastic and other synthetic materials. Maloof brought a modern interpretation to traditional seating and cabinetry forms, and in doing so he created some of the most beautiful and artfully made furniture seen in the country since the 19th-century heyday of the Shakers.

Maloof was born in then-rural Chino, California, east of Los Angeles. His parents were immigrants from Lebanon, then still part of the Ottoman Empire. Maloof’s father sold fruits and vegetables from a cart, and his mother sold her handmade lace and embroidery. It was through her, Maloof would later say, that he found a love of fine craftsmanship.

Maloof tinkered with woodcarving as a boy, making things such as dollhouse furniture, but in high school he became known for his calligraphy and hand-lettered posters and signs. Into his 30s, Maloof made a modest living as a graphic artist. But in 1948, he and his newlywed bride, Alfreda Ward, a crafts teacher, moved into a new house. To save money, Maloof made their furniture from scrap oak planks, and he so clearly loved the work that his wife persuaded him to make woodworking his profession. Within two years, Maloof’s furniture was getting attention in the press, and in 1951 he received his first significant commission when the industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss hired him to make chairs and cabinets for a new office in Pasadena.

Entirely self-taught, Maloof was an intuitive designer, with a natural sense of scale and proportion. He never sketched plans for a piece in advance; on chairs, he said he worked from the legs up. Maloof used no metal hardware in his furniture; rather than bolts or screws, his pieces derive their strength and integrity solely from Maloof’s painstaking joinery.

Though he made all types of furniture, Maloof is best known for his rocking chairs. His are instantly recognizable by their long glides and attenuated, gently curved spindled backrests. Maloof lavished long hours shaping and sanding his chairs to conform to the human body, then oiling and rubbing the wood to give it a silky tactility.

Vintage Sam Maloof furniture is scarce, if not rare: At his peak of productivity in the 1970s, Maloof (by then, working with three assistants) made an estimated 300 pieces a year. His tables and smaller cabinets are priced at around $15,000; because they are his signature forms, rocking chairs made of walnut bring about twice that, more in exotic woods such as tiger maple and rosewood.

As you will see on 1stDibs, Sam Maloof designs are exemplary objects of both beauty and utility — warm, welcoming and rich in honest character.