Low-Back+Side+Chair+(Sam+Maloof)

Date: 1995
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1995/1995.29_1a.jpg?itok=wworXJiu width="244" height="308" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/low-back-side-chair-34536"]] || Title: **Low-Back Side Chair**

Artist: **Sam Maloof** Born: Chino, California 1916 Died: Rancho Cucamonga, California 2009

Medium: ziricote and ebony Dimensions: 29 3/4 x 22 3/4 x 22 1/8 in. (75.5 x 57.8 x 56.5 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Alfreda and Sam Maloof in honor of Michael W. Monroe, curator-in-charge, Renwick Gallery (1986-1995)

Accession: 1995.29 || "Ray Charles couldn't see my furniture, but said he could feel that it had soul."
 * About the Artwork: **

Born in Chino, California, Sam Maloof is a 1934 graduate of Chino High School. He worked as a graphic artist before being encouraged by his wife to pursue woodworking. Having no formal training in the field, he persevered through trial and error to become one of America's preeminent makers of handcrafted furniture.
 * About the Artist: **

Maloof was the first woodworker elected as a fellow of the American Craft Council and the first recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant. He was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 1985. Once of his rocking chairs—regarded by many craft artists as the most difficult type of furntiure to make—was the first piece of contemporary furniture selected for the White House Collection in 1982.

Kenneth R. Trapp and Howard Risatti Skilled Work: American Craft in the Renwick Gallery (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998)

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Maloof's Low-Back Side Chair information
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Resources: **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">About the Artist <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">SAAM Collections Page
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Links: **