Thomas Moser, the Chicago-born craftsman who gave up being a college professor and debate coach to pursue a dream, creating the traditional furniture-maker Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers, has died at 90. A self-taught woodworker who had begun by fixing furniture on the side, he’d been teaching and coaching debate at Bates College in Maine, where he had joined the faculty in 1966, when he left to pursue furniture-making full time. “I never started with the notion this could be successful,” he told USA Today in 1993. “I just wanted to make truly well-made things of wood.” Mr. Moser died March 5 at his home on the coast of Maine, according to the company he founded in 1972 with his wife Mary and which they sold in January. Employing craftspeople in Maine, the company provided pieces for the powerful and anyone else willing to invest in finely crafted wooden chairs, tables and chests, often made of cherry wood, built to be passed from one generation to the next. That quality comes with a price: Even a smaller Thos. Moser bedside nightstand, for instance, will set you back thousands of dollars. Each piece is signed by the Moser craftsperson who built it. The company made a lectern for President Bill Clinton, a rocking chair for President Jimmy Carter, ceremonial seating for Pope Benedict XVI’s 2008 visit to the White House and furnishings for the George W. Bush presidential library. In an NPR interview in 2010, Mr. Moser spoke about his work and how it was influenced by minimalist traditions like those of Shaker furniture-makers: “What makes beauty, in my world, is that which serves,” he said then. “And, if it doesn’t have a functional component, a strong sense of utility, I am not interested in it.” Growing up in Northbrook, he was orphaned when both of his parents died from cancer during his teens, and he dropped out of high school, his son Aaron Moser recently told NPR. “That left him a bit rebellious, I suppose,” the son said. In his online death notice, Mr. Moser’s family said: “Raised in Northbrook, Illinois, he took on roles as a Boy Scout, golf caddy, window dresser and altar boy, showcasing his enterprising spirit.” After serving in the Air Force, Mr. Moser got a doctorate in communications and moved to Maine to teach at Bates. He and his wife, who’d been his childhood sweetheart, had four sons. They decided they needed to make some extra money, so they started a side business that in time would become the high-end Thos. Moser Furniture. Back then, though, their work was more modest. “They would find an old chair or a dresser on the side of the road, and they’d take it apart and put it back together again,” Aaron Moser told NPR. Other survivors include Mr. Moser’s wife, sons Andrew, David and Matthew, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.