About the Exhibition

Connecting the past to the future through fine wood craftsmanship, Thos. Moser, Cabinetmakers is one of Americas finest furniture-making endeavors. This exhibit surveys their 44 years of engagement with wood: Thomas Moser’s struggle to find himself after being orphaned at eighteen, his learning through long-dead masters, his decision to leave a tenured teaching position to pursue furniture making full-time, and his aesthetic and entrepreneurial choices throughout life. At a time when artisans are searching for meaningful ways to engage with their work and their audience, which can afford them fiscal independence, Thomas Moser’s journey provides an example of devotion to artistry and craftsmanship that is uncompromisingly ethical while generating a livelihood for his family, a community of artisans and delivering to the world objects of great beauty and utility.

This Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design retrospective is the first exhibition to examine the central importance of Thomas Moser to the world of fine furniture craftsmanship. The exhibition will illuminate Moser’s approach to this most democratic expression of artisanship, both formally and conceptually, through the objects themselves; comprehensive didactics illustrating origins, timeline, influences, aesthetics, his relationship to and respect for wood; and displays of tools and joinery as well as a beautiful accompanying catalogue.

The work included in the exhibition spans four decades; in many instances walking the viewer through the growth of a chair from early design iterations through several design changes or variations on a central theme, always returning to what Moser via Plato calls “ultimate chairness.” The driving aesthetic is reductive and includes the surety found through exposed joinery in chairs, tables, beds or desks fashioned to endure longer than the growth of the tree.

Thos. Moser: Legacy in Wood was organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design and curated by Guest Curator, Donna McNeil.