Thomas Moser, Woodworker Whose Chairs Were Works of Art, Dies at 90

Thomas Moser, a self-taught woodworker who quit his job as a college professor in 1972 to found a furniture company in Maine and then spent five decades resurrecting traditional American styles with an unmatched attention to detail and craftsmanship, died on March 5 at his home in Harpswell, Maine. He was 90.

Aaron Moser, one of his four sons — all of whom have worked at the company — confirmed the death.

Thos. Moser Furniture, which Mr. Moser and his wife, Mary, opened in an abandoned grange hall in New Gloucester, Maine, was a throwback to the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th century, though in its styles it reached back another 100 years, to the simple forms of Shaker chairs and tables.

It also pushed against two dominant, intertwining trends in American furniture making: the commodified blandness of midcentury modernism and the replacement of small workshops with corporate production facilities, many of which were overseas and used unsustainable materials and practices.

Mr. Moser was a businessman as well as a craftsman, and he drove his company to grow. Eventually it moved to a larger space in Auburn, Maine, where today some 60 craftspeople turn out about 10,000 items a year.

Every Thos. Moser piece is made by hand; the wood — primarily ash and cherry — comes from within a few hundred miles of his workshop; and each item is finished simply, with oil and wax, never varnish or paint, so the grain of the wood and the precision of the joints are evident.

Mr. Moser’s work is not cheap. A single continuous armchair, an original Moser design with one sinuous piece of wood as both back support and arm rest, can run up to $2,730.

But he saw the value in different terms: These were items to serve multiple generations, and, amortized over 75 years or more, such a chair starts to look like a bargain.

“These days, you can go to Ikea and buy a whole house’s worth of stuff for several thousand dollars, and throw it all out in five years,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2013. He added, “Our furniture might take two months to make, but we want it to stay in the family and have it passed down from generation to generation.”

His customers certainly agreed: Some 40 percent of buyers own multiple Thos. Moser pieces, even if they had to save for a year to acquire them.

He designed a lectern for Bill Clinton, a chair for Pope Benedict XVI and seats for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum, the George W. Bush Presidential Center and the New York Public Library.

Mr. Moser approached his work philosophically. Among his many quotations was one borrowed from the Shakers: “Build an object as though it were to last a thousand years and as if you were to die tomorrow.”

Thomas Francis Moser was born on Feb. 23, 1935, in Chicago and raised in Northbrook, a suburb. His mother, Sabina, died when he was 14, and his father, Joseph, who worked in the typesetting department at The Chicago Tribune, died when he was 18.

He joined the Air Force after high school and spent four years as a military police officer in Greenland. After his service, he studied speech education at what is now the State University of New York at Geneseo, graduating in 1958. To earn money, he tuned pianos and repaired antiques.

Mr. Moser married Mary Wilson, his childhood sweetheart, in 1957. Along with their son Aaron, she survives him, as do their other sons, Andrew, David and Matthew; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

The Mosers moved to Ann Arbor in 1958, where Mr. Moser taught high school and studied for a master’s degree in fine arts at the University of Michigan, which he received in 1962. He also put a lifelong love of working with his hands to use, building their home from a Sears kit.

He went on to receive a doctorate in speech communication from the State University of New York College at Cortland in 1965. After teaching for a year in Saudi Arabia, he moved with his family to Lewiston, Maine, where he was hired for a tenure-track position at Bates College.

In addition to teaching communications there, he coached the debate team, taught in a local Congregationalist church and spent his free time teaching himself woodworking.

He fell in love with the complex array of skills needed to produce a chair or table that, to the untrained eye, looks deceptively simple. A mortise and tenon is one of the oldest types of joints, but learning to make one perfectly takes years.

Eventually he decided he could succeed as a commercial furniture maker, and in 1972 he took a sabbatical from teaching. He never returned to the classroom.

His company’s initial business was almost entirely through its catalog, which he and his wife called their “portfolio of ideas” and which they advertised in the back of The New Yorker. Eventually they opened showrooms, and today they have four — in Freeport, Maine; Boston; Washington; and San Francisco.

Unlike some craftspeople, who keep their techniques a close secret, Mr. Moser was open with his. He explained them in a series of books, starting with “How to Build Shaker Furniture” (1977), which today are considered classics among woodworkers.

As he grew older, Mr. Moser slowly pulled back from daily woodworking, though he remained involved with the company until January, when he and his wife sold it to Chenmark, a Maine-based holding company.

“I still have a lot of design in me,” he told The Portland Press Herald in 2007. “I hope it never gets extinguished, because then it would be regretful, what I could have done.”