The House That Sam Built SAM MALOOF AND ART IN THE POMONA VALLEY, 1945–1985 Harold B. Nelson With contributions by Jeremy Adamson Jason T. Busch Jonathan Leo Fairbanks Kay Sekimachi Tia Vasiliou The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens This exhibition and its publication have been made possible by a lead grant from the Getty Foundation Published in conjunction with the exhibition: The House That Sam Built Sam Maloof and Art in the Pomona Valley, 1945–1985 Contents September 24, 2011–January 30, 2012 An initiative of the Getty with arts institutions across Foreword Southern California. STEVE KOBLIK 6 Presenting Sponsors Acknowledgments JESSICA TODD SMITH Major support was also provided by the Steven and Kelly McLeod Family Foundation and the Windgate Charitable Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Ahmanson 8 Foundation Exhibition and Education Endowment and the Elsie De Wolfe Foundation. Copyright © 2011 The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens Preface All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced without the written HAROLD B. NELSON permission of the publisher. 12 Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress 978-0-87328-246-8 (hardcover) The House That Sam Built: Sam Maloof and Art in the Pomona Valley, 1945–1985 978-0-87328-248-2 (softcover) HAROLD B. NELSON Published by The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens 15 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, CA 91108 www.huntington.org The Furniture That Sam Built JEREMY ADAMSON Distributed by University of California Press 28 www.ucpress.edu In Words and Wood: Sam Maloof, Bob Stocksdale, and Ed Moulthrop Catalogue design and composition: Ron Shore, Shore Design JASON T. BUSCH Editor: Karen Jacobson Proofreader: Dianne Woo 74 Indexer: Candace Hyatt An Abiding Friendship: A Conversation with Kay Sekimachi All photographs by John Sullivan, Imaging Services, The Huntington, HAROLD B. NELSON except for the following: Courtesy of Jonathan L. Fairbanks: pp. 92, 98 86 Courtesy of Frashers Fotos Collection: p. 21 Cara Garcia Photography: pp. 144, 145, 175 Richard Gross, courtesy of the Maloof Foundation: p. 27 Sam Maloof’s Transformative Vision: Designed and Made in Wood Alfreda Maloof, courtesy of the Maloof Foundation: p. 14 JONATHAN LEO FAIRBANKS Sam Maloof, courtesy of the Maloof Foundation: p. 22 93 Schenck and Schenck Photography: p. 131 Artists’ Biographies Unless otherwise noted, all works are from the collection of the Sam and Alfreda Maloof HAROLD B. NELSON AND TIA VASILIOU Foundation for Arts and Crafts, Alta Loma, California. 101 Dimensions for objects are given in inches, in the following order: height, width or diameter, depth. Unless otherwise indicated, dimensions represent the maximum dimensions of a work. Also, unless otherwise indicated, dimensions are plate or plaque Lenders to the Exhibition dimensions, not frame dimensions. 188 Front cover: Sam Maloof, Desk Hutch, ca. 1970 (detail; see fig. 33) Selected Bibliography Back cover: Sam Maloof, Coffee Table, 1958 (made for Karl Benjamin) with ceramic group by Gertrud and Otto Natzler 189 Page 2: Sam Maloof, Horn Back Chair with Spindles and Low Curving Arms, ca. 1960 (detail; see fig. 25) Index The quotation from Sam Maloof on the back cover is from Rick Mastelli, “Sam Maloof: 190 How a Home Craftsman Became One of the Best There Is,” Fine Woodworking, no. 25 (November–December 1980): 51. Printed in Hong Kong Foreword All of Southern California experienced a boom after World War II, but the Pomona Valley The House That Sam Built features thirty-five examples of Maloof’s furniture, enjoyed a creative renaissance unlike any other. Postwar living meant breaking with tra- shown beside paintings, sculpture, ceramics, fiber, enamels, and wood by his Pomona dition, and for any number of young people and college faculty looking for something Valley friends and colleagues. Presenting Maloof’s work within the context of his times different, that translated into a search for alternatives to the East Coast Ivy League. Some not only is consistent with the Huntington’s commitment to juxtaposing artworks in of them found what they were looking for in Claremont’s high-quality private colleges disparate media but also sheds new light on the contributions of California artists to and graduate school. The Claremont colleges looked and felt like New England: old ivy-clad the history of art in this country in the postwar era, the period when Los Angeles buildings, a small town established in the 1880s, neighborhoods with leafy Tudors and exploded as an internationally significant cultural center. stately craftsman homes. But these colleges were set in wild Southern California. A short The Huntington is extremely grateful to the Getty Foundation for supporting this drive west took you to the Sunset Strip or the beach—physically and psychologically a endeavor as part of Pacific Standard Time, its communitywide collaboration. Involving world away from New England. Just what a creative spirit needed. more than sixty Southern California institutions engaged in a variety of exhibitions, perfor- Claremont’s colleges attracted people like the Art Students League–trained sculptor mances, seminars, and related activities, Pacific Standard Time marks—in no uncertain Albert Stewart, who brought his Vassar-educated wife, Marion (“Hoppy”), from New terms—the extraordinary dynamism of the postwar Los Angeles art scene. We are hon- York City. She joined her husband on the faculty of Scripps College, mentoring young ored to participate and particularly pleased to be able to do so by exploring what was women in weaving and textile design for almost thirty years. happening not in L.A. but in a place just beyond its borders—and with a beat all its own. The relative quiet of Claremont nurtured creative development. Artistic hubs around UCLA or in Venice Beach were there if you needed them. The Pomona Valley attracted Steve Koblik people like Karl Benjamin, who was a family man and a schoolteacher when he began an President, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens MFA program at Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University). He worked quietly in his Claremont home, building a career that mushroomed; he eventually became acclaimed nationally as one of Southern California’s “abstract classicist” painters. The low-pressure Pomona Valley provided artists with small-town camaraderie, exactly the environment they needed to explore their own directions. Sam Maloof and his artist friends gathered to shoot the breeze at Walter’s Restaurant or the Village Grille. Sure, artists were getting together near their studio classes at Otis or Art Center—then both in downtown Los Angeles—but nowhere else was there the perfect storm of prox- imity, isolation, and college-town community that could have created the “House That Sam Built” phenomenon. It is in this context that we have the opportunity to examine the career of Sam Maloof, among the most important of American woodworkers. His refusal to make furniture for the mass market and his insistence on maintaining a direct relationship with his clients are as much about community as they are about craftsmanship. It is this notion of community that permeates the exhibition for which this catalogue was produced— the understanding that, at this particular time and in this particular place, it was about who ended up there and how they influenced one another. 6 | THE HOUSE THAT SAM BUILT | 7 The House That Sam Built As long as there are men S A M M A L O O F A N D A R T who have not forgotten IN THE POMONA VALLEY, how to work with 1945–1985 their hands, there will remain Harold B. Nelson for the heritage leading figure in the postwar studio furniture movement in the United of the craftsman States, the mid-twentieth-century woodworker Sam Maloof was also a voracious collector with an abiding generosity toward other artists and a a bright light of hope Aremarkable sense of inclusiveness. The home that he built in Alta Loma, California, in which that began at the dawn he placed the work of his friends and colleagues alongside his finely crafted furniture, embod- ies who Maloof was both as a human being and as an artist. Within this house—a hand-built of civilization. environment in which the warm textures of natural wood were enlivened by the bold patterns SAM MALOOF of folk art and the brilliant colors of contemporary textiles—artists working in disparate mediums and from widely divergent points of view were shown together in a happy, if per- haps quirky, harmony. Maloof’s expansive vision for his home and collection—which embraced the work of more conservative practitioners as well as that of some of the twentieth century’s foremost pioneers—reflects the rich mix of artistic voices in and around Southern California’s Pomona Valley in the period following World War II. In this way and in many others, “the house that Sam built” served as a gathering place for this enormously talented and highly influential community of artists. Today the foundation that Sam Maloof created—the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foun- dation for Arts and Crafts—celebrates the spirit of that community. This extraordinary house, as well as its equally extraordinary contents, represents the living legacy of a man who believed in the primacy of the artist’s hand and in the importance of bringing creative vision and beauty to even the most humble moments in everyday life. THE POMONA VALLEY Although he built his home in Alta Loma, a more rural and affordable community east of Claremont, Sam Maloof and his immensely talented wife, Alfreda, were a central part of the lively Pomona Valley arts community. In the years immediately following World War II, Claremont emerged as an influential center of artistic and cultural activity.