He Built His First Furniture From Salvaged Wood. Two Presidents Later Owned His Rocking Chairs.

In 1948, Sam Maloof married Alfreda Ward, and the young couple had a home to furnish. Sam did what a lot of us would love to do: he designed and built the furniture himself, mostly from salvaged materials and mostly out of necessity.

Those first pieces started one of the most famous careers in American woodworking.

From a high school shop class to a garage workshop

Maloof was born on January 24, 1916, in Chino, California, to parents who had immigrated from Lebanon. He took his first woodworking class at Chaffey High School, where his art teacher noticed his skill. After school he worked in commercial art, and in 1946 he became a studio assistant to the artist Millard Sheets.

Soon other people wanted his furniture too. From 1949 to 1952, Sam took commissions and worked out of his garage in Ontario, California. In 1953 the family moved to Alta Loma, and over the years their original six-room house grew by 16 more rooms.

“Woodworker.” Nothing more.

Maloof never put a fancy title on his business card. It said only “woodworker.” He told a Los Angeles Times reporter, “I like the word,” and called it an honest word.

The rest of the world used bigger words. People magazine called him “the Hemingway of Hardwood.” The Smithsonian called him “America’s most renowned contemporary furniture craftsman.” In 1985 he became the first craftsman ever to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, the award often called the “genius grant.”

Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan both owned Maloof rockers, and the White House has several of his rocking chairs. Carter, a keen woodworker himself, once signed a photo for him “to my woodworking hero.” Maloof’s work is also in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The house that moved

In 2000, the extension of the 210 freeway was planned right through the property, so the Maloof home was moved about three miles to a new site. Maloof kept working for the rest of his life. He died on May 21, 2009, at 93.

Today the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts looks after the home in Rancho Cucamonga, California, and you can book a tour of the house he spent his life building and filling with furniture.