Three years ago, amidst the delirium of a newborn son, Christopher Moore quit his day job to start up a woodworking business with partner Molly FitzSimons. Combining Christopher’s experience as a sculptor and Molly’s eye for detail, the duo created Noble Goods, an artisanal design and fabrication company that specializes in modern home furnishings in wood and resin.
Noble Goods is now handcrafting cheese boards and resin-edged tables from local and sustainable sources. And as if that weren’t noble enough, they donate a portion of all profits to Habitat for Humanity each year. We’re excited to feature Noble Goods’s products at What’s Cooking on November 13. Below, check out our conversation with Christopher to learn more about his background and where he sources his wood.
Edible Brooklyn: Where did your interest in woodworking come from?
Christopher Moore: I was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where the houses and everything else are built out of wood. I was always following my father around as a kid fixing wooden things that had fallen apart. I ended up getting a bachelor’s degree and then a master’s degree in sculpture. I worked in a lot of different media but ended up falling in love with wood.
EB: How does the design and fabrication process work?
CM: The whole process takes about six days. First, we carve into a solid piece of wood. Next, we pour liquid resin along the wood, and that resin is ground and re-polished. After the resin is polished, cheeseboards are oiled and tables are varnished. Then Molly takes over. Without her creative input and styling ability, our product wouldn’t have the beautiful design that it does.
EB: Where does your wood come from?
CM: Much of our wood is locally sourced. We salvaged about 2,000 pounds of hundred-year-old wood from a space that was being torn down just blocks away from our shop. When we ran out of that, we went to a Brooklyn-based reclaimed lumber distributor called M. Fine. Now all of our cheeseboards are made from cherry wood that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, which means it is farmed and selected in a sustainable way.
EB: What’s the benefit of using reclaimed wood?
CM: From an economic perspective, it would be smarter to use brand new wood, because we have to pull thousands of nails out of this wood. But there’s incredible beauty in the aging process and the growth patterns and the nails and the scars from factory boards. It feels laborious, but there’s no other way to get that look. When people bring a product like that into their home, they have a special relationship with it.
EB: What will you be featuring at What’s Cooking?
CM: We’ll be showing our tabletop goods: cheese boards, coasters and hazy floozans. We’re really looking forward to meeting the other vendors and being a part of the Edible community!
To learn more about Noble Goods, click here. To purchase tickets to What’s Cooking, click here.
