With $38,000 to spend on American furniture, you could buy a lovely sideboard, c. 1795, or several documented Gustav Stickley pieces, or a contemporary mahogany and juniper bed featuring wild mustangs carved on the headboard by Amber Jean of Livingston, Montana.

Two weeks ago, at the seventh annual Western Design Conference in Cody, Wyoming, Amber Jean sold two to customer. The piece also won Best Western Spirit and People’s Choice awards. Admirers lost their breath when they spotted Jean’s creation. “They clasped at their hearts” she said.

Unbelievable. One hundred years ago, Western furniture meant tomato boxes for seats, coffee cans for bookends, and a few crude, unpretentious items. In the twenties and Thirties, Westerners built simple, but beautiful lodgepole furniture during the winter months. Then 1930s furniture maker Thomas Molesworth of Cody, who has become a household word among American furniture collectors, created his won Western Style: a blend of Arts and Crafts, Art Deco, and Western humor. He built club chairs featuring giant moose antlers, decorated lodgepole beds with images of bowlegged cowboys, and cut horse scenes into fire screens. His furniture captured nostalgia for the Old West. He laughed when he turned two bullets into the on/off pulls on a lamp. His work, fun and courageous, inspired giggles.

Although Molesworth’s work commands prices of up to $75,000 today, I think Jean’s bed is one of few possible the only, contemporary Western piece to sell for as much as $38,000. Most pieces don’t even sell for half that price. For the price of that bed, I could buy and fix up a 400-year old ruin with a view of the Mediterranean and a cobblestone street away from a ditch filled with Byzantine pottery shards.

At $38,000, Western furniture demands to be taken seriously. The question is: will it stand the test of time? Looking around the Western Design Conference auditorium at horny chairs, a table with a glass interpretation of Yellowstone Falls toppling over the top, and other furnishings accented with bright leather, bulbous woods, and Carhartt pillows, I wondered if taking Western furniture too seriously is a bit like believing line dancing could be ballet. At what point is Western furniture no longer any fun?

Wandering through the Cody auditorium, I stopped to speak with the grizzled old pro. Santa Fe furniture maker L.D. Burke. He was standing in the middle of a pile of wooden horns to be attached to his elaborate cupboard featuring a cowboy on a bucking buffalo and the sayings, “It’s never too late to be a cowboy,” and “It’s never too late to be a cowgirl,” out lined with metal spots on the cabinets. He’d titled the work appropriately: “A Cowboy Gone Baroque.”

“Understatement doesn’t exist anymore when it comes to Western furniture,” Burke said. According to him, the “new” cowboys want drop-dead furniture to go in their log mansions which locals are now calling “starter castles,” or “log cabins on steroids.” More is better. “The new royalty are trying to express themselves,” Burke said. They’re showing off. After all, what’s $38,000 if your home costs $8 million?

This attitude that “bigger is better,” and large quantities of money elevate your status and make you chic, is all too much for me and a bit like golfers wearing Rolex watches, but Western craftsmen are trying to accommodate the new Westerners’ fancies. At the Cody conference, furniture ranged from the simple to the delightfully kitschy to some pieces so gaudy “they’d make a bowlegged cowgirl shake in her knees” as one New York Times writer once said some eight years ago of all contemporary Western furniture.

“The definition of Western furniture is in the making at the Western Design Conference,” said furniture maker Diane Cole-Ross of Bozeman, Montana, whose exquisitely crafted rustic table and chair looked downright plain in a roomful of outlandish designs such as a wing back chair with horns, a lodgepole coffin with a bandanna-style cushion, a Murphy bed elaborately covered in cowhide and tooled leather, organic style desks, furniture made with knotted wood, Molesworth-inspired pieces, and a bed called Wet-Dreams featuring Carhartt pillows, plastic blankets, and a sprinkler.

I spoke with one cowboy: Mike Flanagan who designed a love seat covered in a buffalo hide with a removable tail that dangled from the seat. “I’m just a Wyoming cowboy,” he said. “ I wanted to do what I was capable of, what pleased me.” Another man was still gluing together his elaborate bar, which featured a diorama of tipis on the plains. A light switch created sunlight and moonlight over the scene.

For cowboy furniture makers, it’s an exciting time. At the conference, they mingle with colleagues, listen to lectures, and enjoy feedback from clients. Tony Alvis, a California outfitter who makes brilliant fire screens, likes the drive from California, mixing with friends, and seeing the variety of creations. Some craftsmen are influenced by Molesworth, others by Adirondack traditions and/or Arts and Crafts.

Enthusiasm for their work is contagious. What on earth will they come up with next?

“It’s first and art piece, furniture second,” said one maker.

“It’s really a sculpture, too,” Amber Jean said about her mustang bed. “When a piece is artful and people respond emotionally, it’s in the other realm.”

Naturally the conference, by providing a forum, encourages craftsmen to create their best possible pieces. This is not a trade show. These furnishings are not crude cabin decorations. Furniture sits on podiums and demands to be admired like a fine da Vinci.

I often hear people say at the show, “Molesworth would be proud.” Would he? I wonder. If he were alive, he would certainly appreciate the quality of the work and having a few more colleagues. But, would he have appreciated the transformation of Western furniture into a costly art? The man never signed his work and often gave his stuff away before returning to the local bar to play a game of cards.

It will be interesting to see how the Western style continues to define itself. I hope in its evolution toward greatness, the work doesn’t lose its quality, its naiveté, and humor. “Time is the only thing that will tell whether the pieces are lasting,” said Deanne Levison of the Levison & Cullen Gallery, whose specialty has been American furniture for the past 38 years. “The cutting edge of anything may or may not make it in the long term.” I look forward to the journey. (to read more visit www.cowboysindians.com)