Sam Maloof, America’s most widely admired contemporary furniture craftsman, will speak about his professional craft and distinguished career on Tuesday, April 29, at 7:00 p.m. in the Hampton Room of the Malott Commons on Scripps College campus. Maloof’s presentation is preceded by a dinner at 6:00 p.m. Dinner reservations are required and must be made by Thursday, April 24. To make a reservation or for additional program information, please call the Malott Commons Office, (909) 607-8508.
Sam Maloof began making furniture by hand in the mid-1940s, with no formal training or apprenticeship. His distinctive furniture style has developed steadily over decades, with new designs evolving from existing ones. As a result, his furniture has a timeless, classic look, its form directly related to its intended function. He has so developed this trademark style that Maloof furniture pieces can be found in the White House, the Vice President’s House, the President Carter Library, the American Crafts Museum in New York, The M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum, and a host of other museums. In 2001, the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art’s Renwick Gallery ran “The Furniture of Sam Maloof,” the first-ever full-scale Maloof retrospective exhibit, featuring 65 pieces of originally-designed furniture ranging from rocking chairs to dining tables to music stands.
Preferring the title “woodworker” to “artist,” Maloof views his work as reshaping beauty, and emphasizes the human connection to work. According to Maloof: “We marvel and exclaim about the machine, and yet nothing has been designed or made, nor ever will be, as wondrous as the hands of man. What it produces has no element of surprise or feeling that an object made by hand may have. It leaves no room for change.”
For the last 60 years, Maloof has received a stream of awards, accolades, and honorary degrees for outstanding craftsmanship and continued contributions to the artistry of woodwork and Americana including two awards as “Living Treasure,” an Award of Distinction, Lifetime Achievement, from The Furniture Society, an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, among countless others.