Soon after Jennifer Hubbard moved from Baltimore to Stowe in 2009, she and her future husband decided to check out Morrisville, nine miles to the north.
“There was really nothing happening in town,” Hubbard recently recalled, but she thought the sleepy Vermont village had great potential. The historic downtown could support hip restaurants and funky shops and draw some of the Stowe crowds, she thought.
“What’s the story with Morrisville?” Hubbard asked her partner. “Why isn’t it cooler?”
In January 2021, Hubbard fulfilled some of that potential by opening Moss Home Goods, a décor store where she sold her own paintings and embellishments such as candleholders, baskets and pottery. A few years later, she moved across Portland Street into a much larger space vacated by Caplan’s Shoe, Apparel & Camping; there she added furniture, as well as an expanded kitchen section.
Morrisville has grown more vibrant since Hubbard’s first visit, and Moss has contributed to a business boomlet in the village. Along Main and Portland streets, Black Cap Coffee & Bakery and North Country Donuts arrived a few years before Hubbard opened her shop. Soulmate Brewing, located a few doors down, opened in 2023, and Gondolas Downtown, a burger joint on the other side of Moss, started serving in December. She Who Rules, a women’s clothing store, brought trendy styles to Portland Street last August. And Hubbard said a children’s boutique is set to open soon, prompting her to shrink the kids’ section at Moss.
Committed to the downtown’s upward trajectory, Hubbard, 50, joined the board of the Morrisville Alliance for Culture and Commerce, which works to enhance and promote the commercial district and build a “brand identity” for the village, she said.
There are fun, interesting things that are unique that you can’t go to a catalog and get.
Jessica Seddon
Moss is among the newer businesses that are helping make Morrisville a destination by offering “human curation” of items and a “personal touch,” said Jessica Seddon, who chairs the board of the Morrisville Food Co-op. “There are fun, interesting things that are unique that you can’t go to a catalog and get,” said Seddon, who grew up in Westfield and moved to Morrisville in 2020.
These retailers “attract people to make a little bit of extra effort to come there,” she added. “You can’t substitute some other town or some other place. You actually have to go to Morrisville.”
While Seddon and Hubbard see Morrisville drawing more visitors with its newfound appeal, Hubbard wants Moss to cater just as much to local residents by providing options to spruce up their abodes. Her customers aren’t necessarily outfitting second homes from scratch — though she welcomes those shoppers, too — but looking to refresh part of a room or add something new.
“I’m really focused on people who already live in their house, and maybe they are decorating around an inherited piece,” she said, right after helping a customer find a square basket for a room’s corner. “Maybe there’s something idiosyncratic about the way that their floor plan is. I find that more interesting and more challenging and more fun, to try to be a little more personalized.”
Hubbard leans into an urban simplicity that’s relaxed and down-to-earth, contemporary but casual.
Moss’ vibe veers from the décor themes typically associated with Vermont. It’s not cottage chic or rustic farmhouse or ski cabin. Hubbard brings a bit of the city to her store, leaning into an urban simplicity that’s relaxed and down-to-earth, contemporary but casual.
In the open and airy showroom, Hubbard’s 14-year-old hound mix, Bootsy, weaves through the floor displays and greets customers with a deep bark. The front of the store showcases the work of Vermont artisans, including colorful earrings from Jewelwood of Vermont in Enosburg Falls and the groovy, vibrant cups and mugs of KP Farm Pottery in Wolcott.
Hubbard stocks scented candles in pots from Mountain Stone Candle, a Hyde Park producer that embeds crystals in the coconut-based wax, and Three Buds Apothecary in Waitsfield. Moss also carries an array of goat milk bar soaps from Heritage Farm in Walden.
A classic, caramel-colored leather sofa that goes for $6,000 dominates the furniture section in the center of the store. Next to it are a pair of round shearling-covered footrests, each $330. A circular stone coffee table framed in wood and wrought iron serves as a striking statement piece, costing $1,400.
For those who still display photos outside of their phones and social media accounts, Moss offers dozens of picture frames. Pillows with floral, plaid and geometric covers range in price from $49 to $98. Decorative baskets of various sizes and prices abound. Kitchen options include Japanese-style dishware and simple flatware sets, a pasta machine for $54, and Oliver Pluff & Co. teas.
Hubbard’s own paintings adorn the walls with quintessentially Vermont pastoral landscapes: red barns against blue skies and bright green grass; winter scenes of snow and silos. For the fine artist, the showroom provides a more permanent display space than the galleries that have exhibited her work, from River Arts in Morrisville to the Burlington International Airport.
Hubbard studied at Baltimore’s Mitchell School of Fine Arts and Maryland Institute College of Art before dropping out to focus on her painting. She moved to Vermont to follow a guy, now her husband, Timothy Danahy, who co-owns Green Mountain Distillers.
The couple live in Hyde Park near the Green River Reservoir, tucked deep into the woods, where Hubbard never expected to put down roots. With limited income from her art, Hubbard initially worked a series of restaurant jobs around Stowe.
When the pandemic hit in spring 2020, she was making good money at the Stowehof inn and its restaurant. But the job seemed risky amid COVID-19, so Hubbard didn’t return when the shutdown lifted. Instead, she took some time off, hiking and trying to figure out what to do next.
The demographics around Morrisville had shifted in the intervening years, with the growth of Airbnb luring tourists — and the cultural amenities catering to them — outside of Stowe. Likewise, the skyrocketing cost of housing had pushed people out of Burlington and other populated areas. By the time the first space that housed Moss came up for lease in late 2020, people had moved into the area with some wealth and a desire to dine and shop in their nearby village, Hubbard said.
Many of Moss’ first customers were nurses and other staff at nearby Copley Hospital, as well as teachers at Peoples Academy private school. Those essential workers sent one another to the store and shared their Moss finds in a group text, Hubbard said.
She heard upbeat feedback: “This is going to be great for Morrisville. This is exactly the direction that the town is going and needed to go.”
Customers began asking her to carry furniture. Another Vermont store had given up its account with furniture manufacturer Lee Industries, and its representative gave Hubbard the chance to take it over.
Today, clients can choose among hundreds of fabrics for upholstery on custom orders. In the Moss showroom, they can sink into the sofa cushions and swivel in a bucket chair to get a sense of how a piece would fit in their home.
Hubbard acknowledged that she brought a pricey store to a population that’s less accustomed to high-end retail. Morrisville still isn’t Stowe, a prime destination for affluent visitors and second-home owners.
Still, Hubbard said she hopes Moss will draw those shoppers willing and able to splurge. “If you have a house that’s 700 grand or up, and you want good furniture for it, you want to touch that furniture,” she said.
It’s also challenging for a small retailer to sell upholstered goods cheap enough to compete with online retail giants Amazon and Wayfair.
“Furniture is fucking expensive,” Hubbard said. “So even though I’m trying to be as price sensitive as I can be, I had to make a decision to go towards higher-end custom pieces that are more investment-level.”
To appeal to customers of all incomes, Hubbard carries goods at a range of price points and orders a few things from China — ceramic ice cream dishes for $12 and a $10 stoneware salt cellar — because they are less expensive, she said.
“I’m not trying to alienate anybody through sticker shock,” she continued. “I have $6 notebooks. I have $10 tchotchke things. Whatever amount of money you want to spend, I’m trying to make it very easy.”
That’s tougher for retailers these days, with tariffs and rising fuel and transportation costs driving up the price of goods.
“The only thing I can tell my customers is that I’m doing the best I can,” Hubbard said.
Gio LaChance of Wolcott is a frequent Moss customer who said she shops for gifts at Moss and has three or four pairs of earrings from the store. “I turned my husband on to it, so now he knows where to get me gifts,” she said.
In early April, she stopped at Moss to look for Easter basket options for her kids, ages 9 and 13. She went to the register with a couple of travel glasses hand-painted with chickens and a woodland scene; some drawing notebooks; and CATastrophe, a feline-themed game.
“We were thinking about changing out our rugs, too,” LaChance told Hubbard. Her décor at home “can feel stale,” she said. “I need to get inspired.”
Moss gives her that inspiration, LaChance added. Which is exactly what Hubbard hoped when Morrisville inspired her to open Moss. ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Fully Furnished: A Morrisville home goods store represents a renovation of the town’s retail sector”
This article appears in Nest • Spring 2026.
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