Sam Maloof

Part of the Pacific Standard Time initiative, the exhibition "The House That Sam Built: Sam Maloof and Art in the Pomona Valley, 1945-1985" presents works spanning more than 25 years of the acclaimed woodworker's career, as he emerged as the front runner of the American studio furniture movement. This major survey includes 30 Maloof pieces in addition to 80 works by his friends and colleagues, among them Millard Sheets, Karl Benjamin, Otto and Gertrud Natzler and Kay Sekimachi. Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino.

Sam Maloof's home was a haven for art. The master furniture-maker filled his sprawling redwood house in Alta Loma, east of Los Angeles, with a profusion of pieces that he created in his adjoining workshop or collected with his first wife, Alfreda. Many items — paintings, sculptures, ceramics, fiber art, enamels — were produced by friends in the artistic community that blossomed around the nearby college town of Claremont after World War II. Maloof, who died at 93 in 2009, was a major figure in that community, says Hal Nelson, curator of American decorative arts at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.

Sam Maloof's home was a haven for art. The master furniture-maker filled his sprawling redwood house in Alta Loma, east of Los Angeles, with a profusion of pieces that he created in his adjoining workshop or collected with his first wife, Alfreda. Many items — paintings, sculptures, ceramics, fiber art, enamels — were produced by friends in the artistic community that blossomed around the nearby college town of Claremont after World War II. Maloof, who died at 93 in 2009, was a major figure in that community, says Hal Nelson, curator of American decorative arts at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.

Part of the Pacific Standard Time initiative, the exhibition "The House That Sam Built: Sam Maloof and Art in the Pomona Valley, 1945-1985" presents works spanning more than 25 years of the acclaimed woodworker's career, as he emerged as the front runner of the American studio furniture movement. This major survey includes 30 Maloof pieces in addition to 80 works by his friends and colleagues, among them Millard Sheets, Karl Benjamin, Otto and Gertrud Natzler and Kay Sekimachi. Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino.

Rocking chairs and excitement go together like oil and water. In the popular imagination, such old-fashioned chairs have long been associated with lazy afternoons whiled away on comfortable porches. Excitement, on the contrary, comes in all shapes and sizes--except that of the rocking chair, which shares more with the soothing back-and-forth motion of a baby's cradle than with the breakneck speed of a supersonic jet. At Tobey C.

Noted furniture maker Sam Maloof, 69, was in what he called "a state of shock" Monday to be one of seven Californians named as winners of MacArthur Foundation fellowships providing tax-free, five-year stipends--with no strings attached. "I don't know how they even selected me," Maloof said in Alta Loma, where he lives in a seven-acre lemon grove near the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains and makes what many regard as the finest furniture crafted in California. "It's very thrilling.

Two rocking chairs make it clear that Sam Maloof's world is shaped by his heart and his hands. The celebrated contemporary furniture designer made each--by hand--to honor two women who mean so much to him: Freda's Chair for his wife of 50 years until her death; Beverly's Chair for the woman who fell in love first with a walnut table then, a half-century later, married the man who made it. Maloof, whose sculptural wood furniture is so prized by collectors, museum directors and even U.S.

Woodworker Sam Maloof's meandering, organically designed Alta Loma home and workshop remains in the path of the Foothill Freeway. And Maloof, 78, and his wife, Freda, remain intent on preserving the place that many craft-movement cognoscenti consider a masterpiece ("A Man of the Woods," July 24, Life & Style). To that end, supporters have created the nonprofit Sam and Freda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts.

Fifty years ago, internationally acclaimed woodworker Sam Maloof cleared a piece of a citrus orchard north of what is now Ontario International Airport in San Bernardino County. Because money was scarce, he built an undistinguished, flat-roofed, 800-square-foot frame cottage, not unlike countless other crowded little starter houses that went up in tracts across Southern California after World War II.

Not far from the Alta Loma lemon grove harboring Sam Maloof's home and workshop, a shiny city sign proclaims Maloof Avenue. The street wasn't named for Sam, who is merely the region's, and the world's, best-known woodworker. It honors, rather, a distant relative who earned his fortune selling cars. Now Southern California's autopia is finally losing patience with the woodworker, who by most indications is woefully out of step with the times.

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 died Thursday at his home in the Alta Loma section of Rancho Cucamonga, his longtime business manager Roz Bock confirmed. No further details were given.

SHIRLEY NYQUIST, the vivacious record-keeper of her husband's furniture-making business, pulls out a typewritten list from 1960 showing a walnut armchair with sculpted back and upholstered seat priced at $125. And today? That same chair would be $4,500. John Nyquist may not be a top name, but his made-to-order furnishings command top dollar. The Long Beach woodworker has hand-built his legacy among aficionados of midcentury design for almost 50 years. Look to the current vogue for solid wood tables and chairs from contemporary manufacturers such as Thos.

Regarding "An Eye and Heart for Detail" (June 5), a few years ago I read of a book signing by President Jimmy Carter and I rushed to the bookstore before he had to leave. I was the last person in line and took advantage of a brief pause and expressed to Mr. Carter that we had a mutual friend. When I mentioned Sam Maloof's name, Mr. Carter said, "Oh my goodness, he is one of my heroes!" John Balzar's article captured the warm feelings, the joy and the pride of ownership that many of us who know Sam have been fortunate enough to have experienced.

Fifty years ago, internationally acclaimed woodworker Sam Maloof cleared a piece of a citrus orchard north of what is now Ontario International Airport in San Bernardino County. Because money was scarce, he built an undistinguished, flat-roofed, 800-square-foot frame cottage, not unlike countless other crowded little starter houses that went up in tracts across Southern California after World War II.

If this is the age when anything is possible, isn't it peculiar how narrowly we define the bounds of success in pursuing it? Those who set the cultural trends are decidedly single-minded about the proper trajectory for "making it" just now: Parents must do anything they can -- apparently quite literally anything -- to get their children into the best nursery schools. If one's weight and age add up to 20, it's high time to get started. A day lost from the rat race is a day falling behind.

Two rocking chairs make it clear that Sam Maloof's world is shaped by his heart and his hands. The celebrated contemporary furniture designer made each--by hand--to honor two women who mean so much to him: Freda's Chair for his wife of 50 years until her death; Beverly's Chair for the woman who fell in love first with a walnut table then, a half-century later, married the man who made it. Maloof, whose sculptural wood furniture is so prized by collectors, museum directors and even U.S.

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 died Thursday at his home in the Alta Loma section of Rancho Cucamonga, his longtime business manager Roz Bock confirmed. No further details were given.

Regarding "An Eye and Heart for Detail" (June 5), a few years ago I read of a book signing by President Jimmy Carter and I rushed to the bookstore before he had to leave. I was the last person in line and took advantage of a brief pause and expressed to Mr. Carter that we had a mutual friend. When I mentioned Sam Maloof's name, Mr. Carter said, "Oh my goodness, he is one of my heroes!" John Balzar's article captured the warm feelings, the joy and the pride of ownership that many of us who know Sam have been fortunate enough to have experienced.

Rocking chairs and excitement go together like oil and water. In the popular imagination, such old-fashioned chairs have long been associated with lazy afternoons whiled away on comfortable porches. Excitement, on the contrary, comes in all shapes and sizes--except that of the rocking chair, which shares more with the soothing back-and-forth motion of a baby's cradle than with the breakneck speed of a supersonic jet. At Tobey C.

Woodworker Sam Maloof's meandering, organically designed Alta Loma home and workshop remains in the path of the Foothill Freeway. And Maloof, 78, and his wife, Freda, remain intent on preserving the place that many craft-movement cognoscenti consider a masterpiece ("A Man of the Woods," July 24, Life & Style). To that end, supporters have created the nonprofit Sam and Freda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts.