Tribute: Thomas Moser (1935–2025)
Thomas F. Moser, the furniture designer and woodworker who translated Shaker simplicity into contemporary chairs, benches, and tables, in the process galvanizing a broader revival of American craft traditions, died last week at 90. With his wife, Mary, Moser in 1972 founded Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers, which developed into a national brand known for its traditional joinery techniques and its lifetime warranty on its products.
Archival photo courtesy Thos. Moser
In his designs, Moser embraced an unadorned functionalism derived, in part, from the 18th-century wood frame houses that surrounded him in Maine. He rejected artificial coatings, preferring to finish his pieces with oil and wax rather than “suffocating wood with plastic,” as he described the most common alternative. His work derives much of its power and appeal from its visible mortise-and-tenon joints and the contrasting hues between different species of American hardwood, each employed in accordance with its structural properties.
A self-taught woodworker, Moser experimented with novel production techniques, at times inventing his own tools. Among Moser’s most significant designs was his Continuous Arm Chair, a variation on the traditional Windsor chair for which Moser designed and built a jig to bend laminated sheets of cherry into the double-curved member that forms the chair’s top and arms. The result is a generously sized chair that is nonetheless remarkably light and durable enough to withstand decades of use. In a passage in his 2002 book Thos. Moser: Artistry in Wood, Moser described his designs in Platonic terms as seeking “ultimate chairness,” “a goal that recedes forever,” yet must nonetheless be pursued.
Archival photo courtesy Thos. Moser
In contrast to other studio furniture makers like George Nakashima and Sam Maloof, Moser reached a wide audience with his work. Mary Moser, who led the company’s marketing efforts, cultivated its reputation for simplicity, honesty, and durability with well-placed advertisements in publications including the New Yorker and the New England Journal of Medicine. And, by judiciously incorporating CNC machinery into the manufacturing process at the company’s plant in Maine, Moser managed to keep prices relatively affordable. “His lasting legacy was the ability to make commercial furniture with details reminiscent of small shop care and detail,” says Edward S. Cooke, Jr., a professor of art history at Yale who focuses on American decorative arts.
Moser was born in Chicago in 1935. He served in the Air Force, earned a doctorate in rhetoric and public discourse from the University of Michigan, and eventually worked his way to a tenured professorship at Bates College. After discovering a passion for restoring historic houses and furniture, he took leave from his position and struck out to launch the business. “Each piece,” the company’s 1973 catalogue proclaimed, “is made as it would have been 150 years ago.”
Archival photo courtesy Thos. Moser
Moser worked alongside his wife and later his sons Aaron, David, and Andy as the business grew. It opened showrooms in large cities and, in the early 1990s, found success in the contract furnishings market. Numerous leading architects worked with Moser on the design and fabrication of custom furniture for their projects, among them Venturi Scott Brown, SANAA, and Snøhetta. When Pope Francis visited Philadelphia in 2015, he sat in a Moser chair and addressed crowds while leaning on a custom Moser-made support bar.
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The Continuous Arm Chair (1) and New Gloucester Rocker (2). Photos courtesy Thos. Moser
One of Moser’s final solo designs was the Auburn Chair, which featured a sculpted hardwood back inspired by the curvature of Pringles potato chips and debuted in 2014. As Moser struggled with illness in the final years of his life, he scaled back his involvement with the business, and earlier this year the family sold it to a Maine-based holding company. Its staple offerings remain Moser’s designs.
Teaching was important to Moser even as his company grew in scale. He authored five books, appeared on TV shows, gave lectures around the country, and co-taught studios for architecture students at the University of Pennsylvania. A number of craftspeople who started out working for Moser have gone on to become well-known woodworkers in their own right, helping turn Maine into a center for craftsmanship in wood.
Photo by Trent Bell Photography, courtesy Thos. Moser
“His core beliefs remained steadfast,” says Aaron Moser, who developed the company’s contract business and later served as its CEO. “Quality and product were always the most important things to him. Employees, number two, and customers, number three.”
