1. Good examples of the British approach include the Journal of Design History or Tanya Harrod’s The Crafts in Britain in the 20th Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999). For a helpful discussion about the differences between British design history and American design studies, see Design Issues 11, no. 1 (Spring 1995).

2. Museums with separate decorative arts and design departments include the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Art. Museums that link the studio crafts with the decorative arts include the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Mint Museum of Craft and Design is a recent noticeable exception to this division, but there the focus is exclusively on the twentieth century.

3. The most recent publication is Jeremy Adamson, The Furniture of Sam Maloof (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001). Other helpful publications on Maloof include Sherley Ashton, “Maloof . . . designer, craftsman of furniture,” Craft Horizons 14, no. 3 (May–June 1954): 15–19; Glenn Loney, “Sam Maloof,” Craft Horizons 31, no. 4 (August 1971): 16–19, 70; Sam Maloof, Sam Maloof, Woodworker (New York: Kodansha, 1983); Michael Stone, Contemporary American Woodworkers (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1985), pp. 64–81; Rick Mastelli, “Sam Maloof,” Fine Woodworking 25 (November/December 1980): 48–55; and Sam Maloof. Woodworking Profile (Newtown, Conn.: Taunton Press, 1989), videotape. A critical review of the 2001 Maloof exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in Washington points out the shortcomings of this conservative approach, remarking that the craftsman’s all-consuming emphasis on technique and wood has made him an anachronism: “as his archaic skills took over, he faded out of the contemporary conversation; he managed to pull his career back in time, to somewhere around the turn of the century.” See Blake Gopnik, “Going Through the Motions: Renwick’s Maloof Show Honors a Master Craftsman, but No Artist,” Washington Post, October 7, 2001, p. G12; Jonathan Prown and Katherine Hemple Prown, “The Quiet Canon: Tradition and Exclusion in American Furniture Scholarship,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2002), pp. 207–27; Jonathan Bizen, “Assessing an Icon: Sam Maloof,” Home Furniture 13 (November 1997), pp. 66–71.

4. William Morris, The Decorative Arts: Their Relation to Modern Life and Progress (London: Ellis and White, 1878), pp. 4, 25. In Art and Its Producers (1888; reprint, London: Longmans & Co., 1901), p. 3, Morris used the term “architectural arts” to describe “the addition to all necessary articles of use of a certain portion of beauty and interest, which the user desires to have and the maker to make.”

5. William Morris, “Art and Industry in the Fourteenth Century” (1890) in The Collected Works of William Morris, edited by May Morris, 24 vols. (1910–1915; reprint, New York: Russell and Russell, 1966), 22: 386. See also William Morris, “Architecture and History” (1884) in ibid., 22: 296–317; and William Morris on History, edited by Nicholas Salmon (Sheffield, Eng.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).

6. William Morris, “The Prospects of Architecture” (1881) in May Morris, ed., The Collected Works of William Morris, 22: 119–51. William Morris, “Architecture and History” (1884) in ibid., 22: 312. See also “Textile Fabrics” (1884) and “Art and Its Producers” (1888) in ibid., 22: 270–95, 342–55.

7. Morris, The Decorative Arts, p. 4. Morris, “Architecture and History,” in May Morris, ed., The Collected Works of William Morris, 22: 308. For an insightful exploration of this myth, see Laural Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001). See also Mary Douglas, “American Craft and the Frontier Myth,” New Art Examiner 21 (September 1993): 22–26.

8. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Production,” in Illuminations: Walter Benjamin, edited by Hannah Arendt (1968; reprint, New York: Schocken Books, 1988), pp. 217–51; Jean Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production (St. Louis, Mo.: Telos, 1975); Karl Marx, Capital (1867), translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (Moscow: Progress, 1954); Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (London: Routledge, 1984); and Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991).

9. On the definition of studio furniture maker, see Edward S. Cooke, Jr., and Gerald W. R. Ward, The Maker’s Hand: American Studio Furniture, 1940–1990 (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2003), pp. 10–15.

10. Ashton, “Maloof . . . designer, craftsman of furniture,” pp. 15, 18.

11. The best period description of Esherick and his studio, from which the quotations are taken, is Gertrude Benson, “Wharton Esherick,” Craft Horizons 19, no. 1 (January/February 1959), pp. 32–37. Other helpful sources include Woodenworks: Furniture Objects by Five Contemporary Craftsmen (Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis, Minn.: Renwick Gallery and Minnesota Museum of Art, 1972), pp. 22–29; Stone, Contemporary American Woodworkers, pp. 2–17; and Robert Aibel and Robert Edwards, Wharton Esherick, 1887–1970: American Woodworker (Philadelphia: Moderne Gallery, 1996). Garry Knox Bennett, who began to make furniture in the late 1960s in his Oakland studio, is the exception that proves the rule about the pastoralism of studio furniture; he celebrates that his work is “made in Oakland”: Ursula Ilse-Neuman et al., Made in Oakland: The Furniture of Garry Knox Bennett (New York: American Craft Museum, 2001). Ford Maddox Ford, Great Trade Route (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 202.

12. James Krenov, “Wood: . . . the friendly mystery . . . ,” Craft Horizons 27, no. 2 (March/ April 1967): 28–29 and 54; James Krenov, A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook (New York: Van Nostrand, 1976); James Krenov, The Fine Art of Cabinetmaking (New York: Van Nostrand, 1977); James Krenov, The Impractical Cabinetmaker (New York: Van Nostrand, 1979); and James Krenov, Worker in Wood (New York: Van Nostrand, 1981). Useful insights into Krenov’s philosophy and influence include Michael Stone, “The Quiet Object in Unquiet Times,” American Craft 44, no. 1 (February/March 1984): 39–43; and Glenn Gordon, “James Krenov: Reflections on the Risks of Pure Craft,” Fine Woodworking 55 (November/December 1985): 42–49. Krenov, A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook, p. 16. See James Krenov, With Wakened Hands: Furniture by James Krenov and Students (Bethel, Conn.: Cambium Press, 2000); and Ross Day, “A Krenov Student’s Notebook,” Fine Woodworking 146 (winter 2000/2001): 98–103.

13. Maloof, Sam Maloof, Woodworker, p. 23. Jonathan Fairbanks’ introduction to this autobiography also takes a narrow view of commercialism and projects the Morris paradigm onto Maloof: “In other words, the entire Maloof production is that of an artist’s studio, with each work tailored to the needs of maker and buyer. There is no speculative production other than the periodic introduction of three or four new forms each year, made specifically for clients and then included in Sam’s repertoire. . . . No commercial firm can produce or market the Maloof product” (p. 16). Yet, as Caroline Jones points out, the artist’s studio was becoming increasingly more commercial in orientation at this time: The Machine in the Studio (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). On his aspirations for a proper book, see Adamson, The Furniture of Sam Maloof, p. 192.

14. Quotation from Loney, “Sam Maloof,” p. 17. On pricing, see Maloof, Sam Maloof, Woodworker, esp. pp. 31, 39, 41, and 45.

15. On Castle’s prices, see Carolyn Meyer, People Who Make Things: How American Craftsmen Live and Work (New York: Atheneum, 1975), pp. 165–72; Urbane Chapman, “Wendell Castle Tries Elegance,” Fine Woodworking 42 (September/October 1983): 68–73; and Roger Holmes, “Wendell Castle’s Clocks,” Fine Woodworking 59 (July/August 1986): 80–83.

16. The role of signature and authorship in design is well theorized in Frederic Schwartz, The Werkbund: Design Theory & Mass Culture before the First World War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996).

17. Quotation from a ca. 1980 brochure titled “The Signed Edition Series” (in the Wendell Castle file in the Arts of the Americas Department, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). On Castle’s interest in broadening his market from local craft consumers to the New York art market, see Davira Taragin et al., Furniture by Wendell Castle (New York: Hudson Hills, 1989), esp. pp. 54–89.

18. Maloof’s perspectives on employees are presented in Maloof, Sam Maloof, Woodworker, pp. 49–52. On the intensification of domestic craft production in the early national period, see Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780–1860 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990); and Edward S. Cooke, Jr., Making Furniture in Preindustrial America: The Social Economy of Newtown and Woodbury, Connecticut (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

19. On the savvy marketing of Pueblo pottery, see Ruth Bunzel, Pueblo Potter: A Study of Creative Imagination in Primitive Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929); and Barbara Babcock, “First Families: Gender, Reproduction and the Mythic Southwest,” in The Great Southwest of the Fred Harvey Company and the Sante Fe Railway, edited by Barbara Babcock and Marta Weigle (Phoenix, Ariz.: Heard Museum, 1996), pp. 207–18. On Freda Maloof’s interest in business, see Adamson, The Furniture of Sam Maloof, esp. pp. 70–71; and Jonathan Binzen, “Alfreda Maloof: An Appreciation,” Fine Woodworking 134 (February 1999): 36.

20. Photographs of Maloof’s shop interior reveal stacks of certain parts such as spindles and legs that suggest outsourcing. In the 1950s Don Wallance commented on how “creative craftsmanship” in the highly industrialized America incorporated a spectrum of locations from the small shops of designer-craftsmen to the design laboratories of certain industrial designers to small-scale industry: Shaping America’s Products (New York: Reinhold, 1956). On workmanship and variation within free workmanship, see David Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1968).

21. On the local California craft world of the 1950s and 1960s, see Olivia Emery, Craftsman Lifestyles: The Gentle Revolution (Pasadena, Calif.: California Design Publications, 1976); and on the national scene, see Edward S. Cooke, Jr., “Wood in the 1980s: Expansion or Commodification?” in Davira Taragin et al., Contemporary Crafts and the Saxe Collection (New York: Hudson Hills, 1993), pp. 148–61.

22. On Castle’s early efforts in production and limited edition work, see Taragin et al., Furniture by Wendell Castle, pp. 42–45 and 71–73.

23. On the Wendell Castle Collection, see Steven Fennessey, “Carving a New Niche,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, July 19, 1999, pp. 1C and 6C; and Americanstyle (fall 1999): 18.

24. Adamson, The Furniture of Sam Maloof, pp. 149–91.

25. Mastelli, “Sam Maloof”; and California Woodworking (Oakland, Calif.: Oakland Museum of Art, 1981). On the effect of Maloof and his contemporaries on other makers, see Dona Meilach’s Creating Modern Furniture: Trends, Techniques, Appreciation (New York: Crown, 1975); Dona Meilach, Woodworking: The New Wave (New York: Crown, 1981); and the several Fine Woodworking Design Books published since 1977 (Newtown, Conn.: Taunton Press, 1979). Woodshop News published a spirited group of editorials and letters to the editor from December 2001 through April 2002 that focused upon the widespread copying of Maloof’s chair designs.

26. Cooke, “Wood in the 80s”; and Adamson, The Furniture of Sam Maloof, p. 224.

27. Mastelli, “Sam Maloof,” p. 52; and Adamson, The Furniture of Sam Maloof, pp. 114, 120–23, 175, 185–89, 203, and 216–17.

28. California Woodworking, p. 14; and Paul Smith and Edward Lucie-Smith, Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical (New York: American Craft Museum, 1986), pp. 142–43. Barbara Manning, “Master Craftsman Sam Maloof is King of the Rockers Because He Rocks by the Seat of His Pants,” People Magazine, January 6, 1986.

29. Dan Mack, “Thoughts on Chairs and Change and Creativity’s Eternal Vitality,” Woodshop News 12, no. 11 (October 1998): 12. On the commodification of the craftsperson, see Peter Dormer, “The Ideal World of Vermeer’s Little Lacemaker,” in John Thackara, Design After Modernism (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988), pp. 135–44; and Gloria Hickey, “Craft Within a Consuming Society,” in The Culture of Craft, edited by Peter Dormer (Manchester, Eng.: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 83–100.