Blazing a Western technique

Homeowners pulling up stakes in California and heading for new pads in Montana, Wyoming and other parts of the West may want to bone up on Western design. There is rustic and then there is refined rustic.

You’ll appreciate the difference once you see and study works by Thomas Molesworth, a leading Western furniture designer who died in 1977. His adroit use of woods and master craftsmanship rival, as the author points out, Gustav Stickley, George Nakashima and Charles and Henry Greene.

Molesworth’s ranch style furniture -- with its trademark large brass tacks, Native American motifs and wildfire imagery -- has influenced contemporary Western furniture designers such as Jim Covert, Jeff Morris and Marc Tagger.

Molesworth had studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, but his route to becoming a tastemaker was not all about art. He served as a Marine in World War I, worked as a banker for five years and managed a furniture store in Billings, Mont., for the next seven. He moved his family to Cody, Wyo., to open Shoshone Furniture Co. with the intent of selling others’ designs.

It’s unclear when he began making his own furniture, but author Winchell was able to find that Molesworth advertised his company as “makers of distinctive furniture for western homes” in a 1933 Cody Stampede Rodeo program. His chests, tables and beds began showing up in homes of local ranchers.

Molesworth’s big break came when he was hired to furnish the newly built Wyoming ranch of wealthy Moses Annenberg, who owned a horse racing sheet. The commission established the furniture maker’s reputation -- Molesworth introduced bold colored upholstery that gave a rich lightness to the heavy woods -- that attracted big hotels and wealthy individual clients.

The book, short on text, is chock-full of color photographs that beautifully detail the distinctive style and craftsmanship of Molesworth. There are pages and pages of individual keyhole chairs, each with a different design, as well as magazine stands, tables, stands, lampshades and other home furnishings. The book is aimed at collector types of these timeless classics.

-- Nancy Yoshihara