By RUFFIN PREVOST
[oas:casperstartribune.net/news/wyoming:Middle1]
CODY — Woodworker Sam Maloof said he felt a little


guilty leaving his workshop to speak recently to a standing-room-only crowd at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center as part of the Western Design Conference.

“I’ve got a waiting list of people who want to buy my furniture,” he said. “The wait right now is about five years, so people sometimes get a little angry when they hear I’m going somewhere to give a talk or a workshop.”

When customers call to complain about the long wait for one of his pieces, Maloof, who is 91 and has been hailed as a master craftsman for nearly 50 years, prefers to let his office manager deliver the bad news that the wait might be yet another year or two.

“But sometimes I’ll talk to them, and tell them, ‘Just wait, you’ll live longer, and like it better if you have to wait for it,”‘ Maloof said.

“I try to pacify them. I invite them to the shop so they can see what I’m doing, and I’ll say, ‘This is your pile of wood,'” he said. “Then I’ll give them a glass of orange juice or something, and they’re all right for another couple of years.”

Maloof, a self-taught designer and craftsman who first worked as a commercial illustrator, has made rocking chairs for Presidents Carter and Reagan, and his work is part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian Institution.

His signature design, the Maloof rocker, is considered a masterpiece of form and function that is as comfortable to sit in as it is beautiful to behold.

Collectors pay from $45,000 to $60,000 for the rockers, depending on the wood used.

“I have about half a million board feet of lumber in six or seven buildings,” said Maloof, who admits to buying up every slab of walnut or other premium hardwood he can find.

He recalled buying a load of choice wood from a lumber yard, only to be called by the manager before he could pick it up. The yard wanted to sell the wood to someone else, who wanted it for a house-building project.

When told the customer was movie star Brad Pitt, Maloof responded, “Who the hell is Brad Pitt? Tell him it’s not for sale.”

Working with three assistants from his Southern California workshop, Maloof finishes about one piece a week, with some designs taking more than three weeks to complete. He works on as many as a dozen projects at once.

“I used to get calls like the one from a guy who was 72 years old and said, ‘When is my chair going to be ready? I want to sit in it before I die,'” said Maloof.

“Then after I turned about 85, they started saying, ‘When is it going to be ready? I want to get it before you die.’ I liked it better the other way around,” he said with a wry smile.

Though his work fetches top dollar, Maloof said he still works hard — at least eight hours a day, six days a week — because he enjoys his clients.

He keeps a record of every person he has worked for, and considers each a friend.

Years ago, he said, he turned down an offer of more than $20 million from a furniture manufacturer for the rights to make reproductions of his five most popular designs.

“It would have killed me. It would have been the end of me making furniture,” he said. “I like the contact with the people I work for.”

Maloof said inspiration still strikes, and his backlog of ideas is as long as his waiting list of customers.

“I have hundreds of things I want to do so badly,” he said. “Once in a while, I just drop everything and do it. I probably design three or four new pieces a year. I need at least 12 more years to catch up.”

Considered a founder of the American studio furniture movement, Maloof has inspired countless designers and craftsmen, and has new customers whose grandparents bought his furniture decades ago.

Cody designer John Gallis, of Norseman Designs West, said he met Maloof at a show while exhibiting his first chair.

“I was having all sorts of trouble with that chair,” Gallis recalled. “He looked at it and said, ‘I want you to come to my seminar.'”

Gallis, who has since become a local favorite at the Western Design Conference, said he has attended several Maloof workshops, at which he always asks why Maloof invited him to that first seminar.

“Was it because he saw the spark of something brilliant, or he thought, I desperately needed any kind of help I could get?” Gallis wondered. “He still won’t tell me.”

When Maloof hired his first assistant, Larry White, he told the 19-year-old apprentice the position was strictly a summer job. White, now 65, still works with Maloof, and will partner with his two fellow assistants to continue producing the designs after Maloof is “gone,” as he puts it.

“I hope I’m not gone for a little while,” he said. “I like working too much. I like the people around me too much.”