Greg Noll: The Art Of The Surfboard

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Review

Leafing through the pages of “The Art of the Surfboard” wears you out, just from the sheer impact of Noll’s personality. Kampion — a longtime surf writer with a canny feel for the history of the sport — pretty much captures the many facets of Noll’s contributions to surfing and also resists the overheated surf-magazine puffery. Noll emerges not as a god, but as a talented guy good with both his hands and his brain. “Greg Noll: The Art of the Surfboard” zeroes in on Greg Noll and on the art of surfboard craftsmanship, and does so with savvy good humor. — Honolulu Star Bulletin, March 2007

There’s a beautiful coffee-table book coming out from Gibbs Smith called Greg Noll: The Art of the Surfboard. It’s got all the longboard designs from the prison-shorts, big-wave surfer. — Publishers Weekly, Notes From The Bookroom, March 30, 2007

From the Inside Flap

These Amazing, Speeding Objects!
The surfboard is both watercraft and work of art. Its sleek curves and lines are designed for high-performance travel upon the dynamic liquid medium of ocean swells and waves.
Greg Noll: The Art of the Surfboard tells the full story of the surfboard as realized through the hands and mind of a sur?ng legend, who has been hand-crafting surfboards for over 55 years. From simple balsa boards built for Malibu’s small waves in the 1950s to sleek, streamlined dragsters designed for the giant winter surf on Oahu’s North Shore,Greg Noll has lifted the art of the surfboard to a new plane. Utilizing rare and ancient woods (like koa and redwood) he re-creates the classic and important boards from the past.
This is the full story that answers who, how and why as manifested in the life and works of one of surfing’s greatest riders and craftsmen.

From the Back Cover

Every surfboard is a reservoir of potential-a vehicle that leads its riders to powerful, often life-changing experiences with the sea and with fellow surfers.

About the Author

Drew Kampion is the former editor of Surfer, Surfing, Wind Surf, and Wind Tracks magazines. He founded, edited, and published the award-winning Island Independent, and is the author of the best-selling titles Stoked! A History of Surf Culture and Lost Coast: Stories from the Surf. Drew continues to write for magazines dedicated to the surfing life, as well as others. He lives in Washington. He lives in Washington state

Greg Noll is a big man in every way. Nicknamed “Da Bull,” he is a legend in the surfing world, celebrated especially for a trio of achievements:
He was the instigator of the first conquest of the waves at Waimea Bay on November 7th of 1957.
He rode a huge third-reef Pipeline wave-the rarely ridden “cloudbreak”-in December of 1964.
He took on perhaps the largest wave ever attempted, at Makaha, during the epic swell of December 1969.
While Noll’s reputation rests largely on his accomplishments as a big-wave surfer, it is his work as a surfboard shaper that will likely prove most enduring. He shaped his first surfboard in 1950, started his own surfboard business in the balsa-wood era of the 1950s, and went on to become a pioneer in the new foam-and-fiberglass revolution of the early 1960s. By the mid-1960s, Noll was one of the largest surfboard manufacturers in the world.
Over the years, Greg Noll built many notable big-wave (as well as “hot-dog”) surfboards. His signature model campaign with the great surfing iconoclast Miki Dora remains one of the high points of surf-business history, and the resulting “Da Cat” surfboards are among the most prized items at contemporary surfboard and memorabilia auctions.