I’ve loved rocking chairs my whole life. My mom ways when I was a babe in arms, she could put me in a rocking chair and I would rock myself to sleep. I still gravitate to a rocking chair if I see one in a room and although I used to have them on the porch of my little Victorian house before we did the barn, I don’t currently own one. How did that happen?
Anyway if I could pick any rocking chair, it would have to be one of the rustic chic ones made by Sam Maloof. Mr. Maloof, who died in 2009 at the age of 93, was one of America’s most renowned woodworking artists.
He was particularly famous for his organic and sensuously curved rocking chairs but he crafted other furniture pieces as well. His work is represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Smithsonian. People magazine once dubbed him the “Hemingway of Hardwood”, a most befitting moniker.
A modest man, Mr. Maloof’s business card said “woodworker”, but he was so much more than that. He was a gifted artist of the highest caliber. Enjoy these images from one of America’s most rustic chic artists.
