Award--winning Alta Loma photographer Gene Sasse is pleased to announce the release of a strictly limited, numbered and signed edition of Maloof Beyond 90- an American Woodworker.

Two years of intense production were dedicated to replicate the emotional wonder that is inherent in everything associated with America’s most celebrated woodworker, Sam Maloof. As Gene explains, “Sam approaches each project with more than just an exacting eye for design and detail. Wood is carefully selected. It is then cut, honed, polished and joined together. Ultimately the pieces of once living trees are resurrected to a new life as functional objects of the highest artistic merit.”

To hold one of the 500 editions or 50 artist proofs is to experience the clearly perceptible difference between a mass produced compared to a finely crafted book in the same way that there is clearly quality dissimilarity between a chair produced on an assembly line and one that requires six weeks to create. It is the difference between ordinary and extraordinary.

Bound in the finest hand-tooled Moroccan leather, the generously sized edition is replete with the tactile satisfaction and visual pleasure the public and connoisseurs the world over expect from the master woodworker himself. Forty-three original color photographs were selected to provide the visual narrative. These are printed onto forty-six pages of the finest quality cotton rag archival printing paper.  Between these, translucent vellum sheets provide resting places for an additional forty black and white photographs and renderings. Intimate explanatory text of the artwork is provided by people fortunate to know Sam or to have collected his furniture. The list of contributors includes captains of industry, leaders in the arts and even the 39^th President, Jimmy Carter.

“My goal, as the creator and photographer, was to capture the essence and spirit of who Sam is. Over the years, while observing and photographing his work and his loves, Sam’s passion for life came in to clearer focus. His enthusiasm springs forth in everything he owns or does.  Art is not just something he creates and collects- his life is a work of art that deserves to be celebrated and commemorated. This is even more so now that he has passed the milestone birthday of ninety- two years of age and continues to enjoy his calling- the making the furniture.”

A life-long Californian, Gene’s professional experience is broad and well-honored. One of the projects Gene is best known for was being commissioned to complete was the restoration of the original transparencies of the Great Isaiah Scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls by the Claremont School of Theology Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center for a book on the scroll by Oxford University Press. In addition, he is the author of Garden Thoughts: Photographs, Quotes and Inspiration for the Gardener, the first in a gift book trilogy.

Lydia Plunk