Recap of Our Evening with Thomas Moser and the New York Public Library

Last month we opened the doors of our Flatiron showroom for an evening we’d been looking forward to: a conversation between Philip Hussey, CEO of Thomas Moser, and David Lim, Vice President of Capital Planning and Construction at the New York Public Library. Our own Olivia Lord, Jewett Farms’ marketing director, moderated..

We’ve been building custom cabinetry from our shop in York, Maine for 27 years now, guided by our cabinetmakers and designers rather than an assembly line. So when we think about who belongs on a panel in our showroom, Thomas Moser is a perfect fit. Jewett Farms + Co. Founder, Matthew Lord, looked to Thomas  Moser’s company as a model when he founded Jewett Farms.

A furniture maker’s origin story worth telling

Philip walked us through the company’s beginnings: Tom Moser was a debate professor at Bates College who, in 1972, resigned to try his hand at furniture making full time. His wife Mary, who Philip credits as being “way ahead of her time” on marketing and sales,  helped turn a side hustle fixing furniture into Thos. Moser. By the 1980s, Thomas Moser was building institutional furniture, starting with the Margaret Chase Smith Library. Their client list has since included Steve Jobs’ desk, along with pieces for popes, presidents, and cabinet secretaries.

The chair that took on the New York Public Library

The centerpiece of the evening was, fittingly, a chair. When NYPL began reimagining its Midtown campus. David and his team wanted a modern reinterpretation of the library’s iconic 1911 reading room chairs, originally designed by Carrère and Hastings alongside the building itself. After a competitive process, they chose Thomas Moser.

The brief was deceptively simple: the chair needed to survive roughly 11.2 million visitors a year, stay comfortable for hours of reading, be light enough for library staff to move and clean under daily, and be built by a domestic partner NYPL could work with for decades, not just one order. What Thomas Moser delivered is a single steam-bent piece of wood forming the back and arm,  joined at the front with a bridle joint that adds both strength and a quiet bit of visual elegance. No stretchers underneath, so the cleaning crew can vacuum without a fight. The result has picked up an Architecture A+ Award and a Good Design Award. The chairs now sit in roughly ten renovated branches, with five more renovations underway.

Why Maine keeps producing work like this

Both Philip and Olivia returned to the same idea: something about Maine’s culture of craftsmanship pushes people to build things that last. Philip put it simply, everyone in Maine is a phone call away, and that kind of accessibility and care shows up in the work. Tom Moser’s own standard was that a piece of furniture should outlast the tree it came from, which means thinking in terms of a hundred years, not ten.

Curious to see the full conversation? Watch the panel below.