- I want a chair to be very beautiful.
I want a chair that is good to the eye, and I want a chair, above all, that is comfortable.
A chair should invite you to sit.
It has to give you a good back support.
I have had people say that my furniture is art, that it's sculpture, it's this and that
but I really don't care what they call it, as long as I'm happy with what it is.
This is Larry White. and Larry was my very first employee.
But this old chair, this is beautiful fiddle back.
When he oils it, it's going to be just knock out.
I like to work in a wood..
It's a very sensous material.
I love the color of the different kinds of woods that I use.
This is a chair that we made some years ago.
Somebody bought it at auction and brought it back to him to be oiled.
Each of the boys, well, we all have our hands in everything.
that goes out of here.
I have found that my furniture's withstood the test of time.
These are chairs.
We just finished a huge dining table.
And these are the dining chairs, that go with that.
These are chair seats that I'm going to put legs on.
We do everything to order.
It isn't a production shop.
We don't have parts all over the place that we're waiting to put together.
When you're working, there's a communion between the object maker and the material he or she
is working with.
Then it transcends into something much greater.
When you make something and someone likes it, enjoys it and all, you're paid tenfold.
Yeah, that's going to be alright.
Here it is.
I'm getting too old for this.
I guess I should go and lie down once in a while but I don't.
I love what I do.
I'm 90 and I can still work.
It really started when I got out of the army.
I didn't want to work for anyone.
I didn't want be ever regimented again.
So I went right to work at what I really like - the Graphic Arts at Scripps College Graduate
School.
I was at the school one day, in the courtyard and I saw this girl, clear across and I looked
at her and I thought - that's the most beautiful girl I've ever seen.
She walked all across the courtyard to me and said - Pardon me, but could you tell me
where the office is?
I said, I'm not going to tell you.
I'll take you.
And I'd go back about twice a week.
Never saw her.
Come September.
I was at the same spot.
She entered at the same spot.
Looked up, walked over to me.
And said - Hello Sammy and.
Three months later, we were married.
Frida was the heart and soul of what I do.
When I married Frida, I think we didn't have any furniture at all in the house.
So I made furniture for her.
I made it out of dunnage, that I found along the railroad tracks.
And a magazine heard about it, sent a photographer out.
I was published in national magazine and people started writing to me so on the strength of
that, I quit my job and started making furniture.
She became my partner in more ways than one.
She was sort of my protector.
If it hadn't been for her, I think I would have quit a long time ago, but she said, we
can do it, we can do it.
And so we did it, together.
This is the first chair I ever made.
And I liked it.
I thought it was very simple and all, and I'd gotten a little bit known and I entered
this chair in the show , the Los Angeles Art Museum, and it was rejected.
And I got a slip.
I can always remember, Frida at the sink, washing dishes.
And she said, any good mail?
And I said, no, look at this.
And she read it.
And it was a rejection slip.
And I thought she'd throw her arms around me and tell me that they didn't know what
they were doing.
And she calmly put it down, turned away, kept washing dishes and said Sam, rejection is
good for the ego.
And I never forgot it.
I never ever forgot that.
I didn't know anything about the craft movement at all.
I just started working.
And then one day I received a letter from the craft council and they'd invited me to
show a piece.
The first conference that we had was at Alisomar.
There were a lot of craftsmen like Bob Stocksdale and Arthur Carpenter and Wharton Esherick,
Walker Weed, you know.
And there were about four of us on the panel and they were challenging us.
I know they were, and they said - making a piece of furniture takes weeks, months to
make, where you design it and a factory can turn them out by the dozens and that type
of talk, or what makes you think you could make a living at what you're doing?
Well, you know, those are kind of hard questions because you don't know if you're going to
be able to make a living.
All of us in the panel just sat there like dummies.
And I finally spoke up and I said, you know as for me, if Charles Eames wants to design
plastic bowls to sell by the thousands, I think it's his privilege, but as for me, I'd
rather work the way I'm working.
I can't produce very much, but I get the pleasure of making the piece, I get the pleasure of
meeting the people.
And I said, I'm going to continue that way.
And after it was over, well, Wharton Esherick was a real, you know, a batty kind of a guy,
Young man, Come here.
And I went over to him and I thought, oh hell, he's going to bowl me out about something.
And he said, I heard what you said and don't you ever change.
And I haven't.
I followed what I wanted to do.
I didn't let what was popular guide me.