Former Bates college professor Tom Moser left teaching in 1972 and started making one-of-a-kind furniture in an old Grange hall in New Gloucester, Maine. His wife, Mary, managed sales and finances, while their four sons trained as apprentices.
The company’s official history gives a sense of the not-so-highly planned beginning:
“There was no business plan, no product, no sense of marketing and, to their banker’s horror, no cash or cash flow.
“The first advertisement, which ran in Down East magazine, read, ‘Antiques are prized for their qualities of age, design and purity of craftsmanship. Our furniture is inspired by traditional design, constructed with pride and executed by hand, restoring a relationship between man and his practical art.’ Since then little has changed in the company’s intent or product.”
Over 40 years, the company has gone from a one-man operation to almost 70 cabinetmakers. Moser continues to conceive and design new products in collaboration with his youngest son, David, while son Andy is an accomplished craftsman in the shop and son Aaron directs the company’s new business development efforts.
In 1987 the company moved to a new workshop in Auburn. It maintains catalogue sales and has six showrooms, in Freeport, Maine, New York City, Washington D.C., Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco.
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- Thomas Moser ponders over the design of one of his new chairs recently in his design shop. Moser draws inspiration from one of his signature pieces, the continuous arm chair, left. The chair went into production in 1977 after two years in development. “I don’t design much on paper. I conceive in three-dimesional space, then draw it so you can build it,” said Moser.
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- Prototype furniture pieces hang on what Thomas Moser describes as his “Wall of Tears” — designs that never made it into production.
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- Furniture maker Brenda Swett works on a blanket box in the Auburn plant.
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- Craftsmen in the Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers factory in Auburn assemble furniture.
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- Christine Bedard applies a coat of linseed oil to a piece of furniture. The oil brings out the natural beauty of the wood, said Bedard.
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- Jim Hagen, the prototype furniture designer at Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers, plays with a sculpture made from scrap pieces of mitered dowels in the design studio.
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