Sam Maloof

"The first craftsman to receive a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, a man whom his friend and fellow furniture maker Jimmy Carter called the best woodworker that ever lived, Sam Maloof was one of the great masters of midcentury modernism. His pieces sensuous, inviting design and immaculate workmanship elide any distance in critical perception between craft and art, and his furniture is found in private domains throughout the world and in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian. Warm and gregarious, Maloof was loved by those…