Rev. Cwirla's Blogosphere

Just about everyone who calls himself a woodworker knows the name Sam Maloof.  The guy even has a joint named after him, a clever rabbit/dado that joins, literally welds, the seat of a chair to its legs.  His work is in the Smithsonian Institute and the personal library of every US president since Jimmy Carter.  Maloof's rocking chairs are legendary; if you've never sat in one, you haven't rocked.

Sam Maloof is designer, craftsman, sculptor, artist, and visionary rolled into one.  He preferred simply to be known as a "woodworker."  It's an honest title for a decent man.  His works are flowing and tactile; they defy categorization.  His chairs beckon you to sit, relax, and touch, daring you to defy the museum's "Do Not Touch" warning.  

I met Mr. Maloof several years ago at a 50-year gallery retrospective of his work and had the privilege of hearing him lecture on the craft of woodworking.  He is the JS Bach of wood - woodworking as doxology and prayer. I recall shaking those strong, calloused hands with a finger foreshortened by a brush with a band saw.  They were priestly hands of one who offers up humble yet elegant creations in wood as his living sacrifice.

One thing that impressed me about Sam Maloof's work was the fact that he often used the most common grades of wood, especially walnut, to create quite uncommon pieces.  These were the boards rejected by the perfectionists that became the capstone of his priestly work.  They had sapwood and figure and wild grain and knots.  Perfectionists called them "flaws," Maloof saw them as divine fingerprints.  Our eyes are tuned to machine-made "perfection" - dull, lifeless, devoid of character.  Maloof's creations were not perfect; they were beautiful, reminding us that God didn't make things "perfect" in the beginning but "good" and "very good."  I'll leave "perfection" to the platonists.

I believe that the human urge to create is a vestige of our being made in the image and likeness of the Creator.  Our creativity reflects our Creator.  There are animals that use tools and elephants that paint, but we seem uniquely driven to create "ex nihilo" or at least "from scratch."  Whether it's cooking a fine meal from whole foods grown in the backyard or fashioning a dining table out of a tree cut down in the back forty or fashioning a cup pr saucer from a lump of clay, we are driven to create things, sometimes for no utilitarian reason.  Robert Farrar Capon calls this "the priesthood of Adam," and he is quite correct.  Adam was made to be a priest in God's garden, and we are priests in our own gardens and workshops, lifting up our offerings, and in so doing, giving a little hint of the "something more" that is our humanity.

Maloof writes this in the Epilogue of his book Sam Maloof - Woodworker:

Too often we who make objects - and I speak of all media - become quite taken with what we have done. We accept all credit, all praise.  We become smug and conceited.  I believe no man has ever designed anything that approaches the complexity of the simplest flower or the grandeur of a great redwood tree. God is the Creator of all things, and the beauty He has given us is awesome.

Thank you, Sam Maloof, for inspiring us to see and touch the beauty in wood, and for giving us a comfortable place to sit and contemplate the beauty God has given us.

Peace.