By RUFFIN PREVOST
\n [oas:casperstartribune.net\/news\/wyoming:Middle1]
\nCODY — Woodworker Sam Maloof said he felt a little
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\n 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.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Collectors pay from $45,000 to $60,000 for the rockers, depending on the wood used.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
When told the customer was movie star Brad Pitt, Maloof responded, “Who the hell is Brad Pitt? Tell him it’s not for sale.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
He keeps a record of every person he has worked for, and considers each a friend.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
Maloof said inspiration still strikes, and his backlog of ideas is as long as his waiting list of customers.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Cody designer John Gallis, of Norseman Designs West, said he met Maloof at a show while exhibiting his first chair.<\/p>\n
“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.'”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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