Larry Gipson
08-13-2012, 2:33 AM
While shopping for a bandsaw, I became familiar with the name, Sam Maloof. People seemed to use this name fairly often while singing the praises of the Agazzani bandsaw since this was his favorite.
On Saturday, despite 105F temperatures, my wife and I visited the Maloof Foundation. It was a pretty profound experience for me in that finally understood the point where working with wood becomes art. Sam Maloof and the people who worked for him humbly call themselves woodworkers, but really are wood artists. They use wood as a sculptor would use clay or stone. They rough in a work with tools I understand, then use rasps and other hand tools to take the wood away a little at a time, revealing the underlying art, both of the wood itself and of their use of it to make a chair or whatever they wish to create.
We got there a little early for the 1pm tour so we walked around the property a little. I found the woodshop (which is still operational) and found Larry White working inside. He saw me and came to the door, then took me on a short, private tour of the shop. They are working on a set of 23 chairs for a yacht using what looked like a slightly modified version of one of Sam Maloof's famous chairs. I saw the "Maloof Joint" in the seat and leg before they were joined. I saw the seats that were in various stages of completion. Some had been roughed in , some were just marked in pencil, others were just glued up pieces. There's a 16" Agazzani bandsaw as you enter the shop and a 32" Agazzani bandsaw as you turn the corner into a second shop area. Huge tools were everywhere. As I left for the tour, I shook Larry's hand, not thinking that this guy builds rocking chairs that sell for $24k each. My goodness.
At one part of the tour, you enter a rounded building with samples of Sam Maloof's work through the years. There I met an artist who had painted several of the paintings in the Maloof home. He spoke of Sam's work from the viewpoint of an artist. Fascinating. For instance, if you take your finger and trace along the seat of one of his chairs, you find an edge that continues up the side of the chair, along the arm, then down to the seat again. This continuous line is present in all of his later work and I would have missed it if it weren't for this conversation. The "Maloof Joint" seems to appear in the mid 80's. Before that, chair joints are either screwed (with a dowel plug) or simple doweled. All of the later chairs I saw used this improved joinery.
What a great afternoon. http://www.malooffoundation.org/
Larry
On Saturday, despite 105F temperatures, my wife and I visited the Maloof Foundation. It was a pretty profound experience for me in that finally understood the point where working with wood becomes art. Sam Maloof and the people who worked for him humbly call themselves woodworkers, but really are wood artists. They use wood as a sculptor would use clay or stone. They rough in a work with tools I understand, then use rasps and other hand tools to take the wood away a little at a time, revealing the underlying art, both of the wood itself and of their use of it to make a chair or whatever they wish to create.
We got there a little early for the 1pm tour so we walked around the property a little. I found the woodshop (which is still operational) and found Larry White working inside. He saw me and came to the door, then took me on a short, private tour of the shop. They are working on a set of 23 chairs for a yacht using what looked like a slightly modified version of one of Sam Maloof's famous chairs. I saw the "Maloof Joint" in the seat and leg before they were joined. I saw the seats that were in various stages of completion. Some had been roughed in , some were just marked in pencil, others were just glued up pieces. There's a 16" Agazzani bandsaw as you enter the shop and a 32" Agazzani bandsaw as you turn the corner into a second shop area. Huge tools were everywhere. As I left for the tour, I shook Larry's hand, not thinking that this guy builds rocking chairs that sell for $24k each. My goodness.
At one part of the tour, you enter a rounded building with samples of Sam Maloof's work through the years. There I met an artist who had painted several of the paintings in the Maloof home. He spoke of Sam's work from the viewpoint of an artist. Fascinating. For instance, if you take your finger and trace along the seat of one of his chairs, you find an edge that continues up the side of the chair, along the arm, then down to the seat again. This continuous line is present in all of his later work and I would have missed it if it weren't for this conversation. The "Maloof Joint" seems to appear in the mid 80's. Before that, chair joints are either screwed (with a dowel plug) or simple doweled. All of the later chairs I saw used this improved joinery.
What a great afternoon. http://www.malooffoundation.org/
Larry