The Faces of 1994 : From the Twentysomething Mayor Who Stayed Home to the Eightysomething Photographer Who Returned There, We Catch Up With some of These Pages' Most Interesting Personalities : SAM MALOOF : 'This Will Be a Renewal . . . It's Exciting"

The Faces of 1994 : From the Twentysomething Mayor Who Stayed Home to the Eightysomething Photographer Who Returned There, We Catch Up With some of These Pages’ Most Interesting Personalities : SAM MALOOF : ‘This Will Be a Renewal . . . It’s Exciting”

By BOB SIPCHEN

Dec. 26, 1994 12 AM PT

Woodworker Sam Maloof’s meandering, organically designed Alta Loma home and workshop remains in the path of the Foothill Freeway. And Maloof, 78, and his wife, Freda, remain intent on preserving the place that many craft-movement cognoscenti consider a masterpiece (“A Man of the Woods,” July 24, Life & Style).

To that end, supporters have created the nonprofit Sam and Freda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts. The organization is discussing how best to work with government agencies to move the workshop and house--and the Maloofs--to an as-yet-undetermined location nearby, where Maloof will also design and build a new house, to serve as a gallery.

Among the board members is Patrick Ela, who heads the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum, and history professor Nox Mellon, the director of Riverside’s Mission Inn Foundation. The board is studying various models of house-based museums, including Pasadena’s famous Gamble house.

The houses and craft collection will be donated to the foundation, with the understanding that Maloof’s son and assistants eventually take over production of the furniture and be allowed to work there. Sam and Freda will have lifetime occupancy of the estate.

Tentative plans for the project at its new site include weekly interpretive tours of the new house, which will serve as a gallery for the family’s extensive collection of modern craft objects and furniture, and of the Maloofs’ current house.

Maloof, widely regarded as one of America’s greatest craftsmen, may also give seminars, funds from which would sponsor one- to three-month woodworking internships in the workshop.

Having put 30 years of labor into his current home, Maloof concedes that planning for the move has been traumatic. But, he added, “I’m not going to let it bother me. . . . This will be a renewal . . . an opportunity to try new ideas. . . . It’s exciting, really.”