Please do not touch
The shop that looked like a museum, and changed what America thought an object was.
In 1994, on Greene Street in SoHo, two men opened a store that treated a bottle opener with the same reverence as a crown jewel. For eighteen years MOSS blurred the line between retail and curation, launched careers, threw legendary parties, and made “design” mean something in America. This site is a scrapbook of their two careers, together and apart.
“Once in a hundred years, a shopkeeper may emerge with a vision powerful enough to alter the culture…. If a new design revolution results, it will have started at 146 Greene Street in the shop called Moss.” The Washington Post, 2003
The men behind the vitrine
Murray Moss
Founder · Curator · The Eye
Born c. 1949 in Chicago (Lincolnwood, if he’s being honest), trained at Columbia and NYU, and first a professional actor on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1978 he co-founded the fashion label Shamask, known for its architectural clothing. He sold it in 1990 — and four years later opened MOSS, applying theatrical staging to teapots, porcelain, lamps, and furniture. Over a hundred exhibitions followed, plus books for Rizzoli, lectures from Harvard GSD to TED, the Chrysler Design Award, and induction into the Interior Design Hall of Fame. In 2011, Art + Auction named him one of the most powerful people in the art world.
- Columbia BA · NYU MFA
- Actor → Shamask (1978–1990) → MOSS (1994) → Moss Bureau
- Chrysler Design Award · Russel Wright Award · Interior Design Hall of Fame
- Board, Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum
Franklin Getchell
Partner · President · The Engine
A Harvard graduate, classically trained actor (Royal Shakespeare Company, London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), then a decade on stage and screen. Reinvented as a writer and Emmy- winning television producer — over 800 hours of programming on PBS, NBC, CBS, ABC and HBO, including six years running Sesame Street at Children’s Television Workshop, plus a Peabody, a Christopher, and the Japan Prize among thirty-plus honors. In 2000 he joined Murray as life and business partner, becoming President of MOSS through its expansion years, and co-author of Please Do Not Touch. His advice, never abandoned: never take no for an answer.
- Harvard · Columbia · LAMDA
- Actor → TV producer/writer (Emmy, Peabody) → President, MOSS
- Four careers, one theatrical thread
- Co-author, Please Do Not Touch (Rizzoli, 2018)
What MOSS meant
The full scrapbook →“If you were a young designer, selling at Moss was akin to being awarded a Grammy or an Oscar — except it was for making beautiful stuff.”Tony Moxham, Upstate Diary
“MOSS was not about money — it was all about taste… MOSS was the most inclusive exclusive club I have ever belonged to.”Dung Ngo, editor, Please Do Not Touch
“At the start of my career, Murray Moss believed in me and generously visited me over and over again — which proved to be life-changing.”Hella Jongerius
“I was indiscriminate. I would put something very expensive next to a bottle opener… It was totally Machiavellian manipulation.”Murray Moss, The Grand Tourist, 2024
Start here
The Timeline
Fifty years across four careers: acting, fashion, television, and the gallery that changed design retail.
View →Iconic Objects
The zeitgeist-shaping pieces MOSS sold, commissioned, and turned into legend — museum plates included.
View →The Archive
Every source, interview, profile, and obituary-of-the-store worth reading, linked and annotated.
View →“Do what you need to do, and do it as well as you can.” Murray Moss — advice to Maarten Baas, age 25, before his first solo show