Cowboy High Style [SOLD]

Cowboy High Style: Thomas Molesworth to the New West

Elizabeth Clair Flood

Gibbs-Smith Publishers

First edition paperback, 1992. 176 pages illustrated in color

Condition: very good condition

In the northwest corner of Wyoming in the mid-1800s, "a lonely cowboy, alias a jack-of-all-trades, sits by his pot-bellied stove, building a piece of furniture out of lodge-pole pine, a bundle of willows, and a stack of driftwood. . . Fine wood was scarce, and tools were crude, so early western furniture was designed to function. With an ax, a drawknife and a saw, a cowboy made something to sit on, sleep on, and eat off of. Style was not a priority. Little did this cowboy know that he and the early settlers who peeled poles with a drawknife and built furniture out of necessity were also building a tradition whose products would capture the eye of future western romantics and, a century later, be desired by furniture lovers worldwide." [Flood 1992:11]

"The first person to fashion the functional cowboy-culture style, and still the leading light of the western furniture and style movement, was Cody, Wyoming's own Thomas Molesworth (1890-1977). In his interiors Molesworth created a western fantasy with burls, bright leather, Chimayo weavings, Navajo blankets, western objects, Indian artifacts, and artwork. . ." [ibid]