From my earliest childhood memories, I remember my Dad working with wood. Friends of the family would joke that Dad would have to keep his bird carvings away from the cats because they would try to eat them. Dad instilled in me his passion for creating and wood carving. Before I was ten years old I was carving animals out of wood.

             In the 1970's, while I was attending Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota Florida, my Dad, Howard Moore Jr., along with his friend Dick Porter started making Appalachian lap dulcimers. They would teach classes on making and playing the dulcimers every year in Montreat North Carolina, a yearly tradition that went on for over forty years, to this day they have made around 600 dulcimers.

            In 2012 I asked Dad to help me build my first ukulele...'How hard could it be?...it cant be much different than a dulcimer' we thought...how wrong we were. The little instrument proved to be more of a challenge than we had imagined. I had heard it said by an old luthier  "you don't even begin to know what you're doing until you've made at least 50 of them", and this proved to be true. Some of those early ukuleles now hang on the 'wall of shame' or have been turned into birdhouses outside my wood shop...a reminder that education always cost. At the time of this writing, I have made over 130 ukuleles. My ukes are made one at a time with a passion for excellence and an obsessive love for the instrument.

          In some cultures, it is believed an object of art contains part of the spirit of the artist that created it, this power they call 'Mana'. It is my hope that each of my instruments will convey the Mana of Peace, joy and love that went into creating it. It has been said that "Its hard to feel bad when you're playing a ukulele"...I have found this to be true and it is my hope for all who hold my instruments.