- [Scott] This is something you've got to either teach yourself or have somebody teach you.

It's not in a book.

Again, it's unfortunate that this is going to be a lost art.

It's only a matter of time.

(dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music continues) (dramatic music continues) (dramatic music continues) (dramatic music continues) (birds chirping) (lively music) (hammer clanking) (tool whirring) - [Narrator] In a world of fast fashion and fast furniture, functional art invites us to slow down and appreciate the details.

This is art you can sit on, drink out of, or wear on your feet.

It looks different depending on where you are.

There's often something that makes a creation from a particular region stand out as being uniquely from that place.

We see this with Western functional art pieces which differ from, say, the Appalachian, Adirondack, or Southwestern styles in the United States.

- When I think about what is Western, it's a distinctly American style, and it's something that is not really influenced by Europe.

- Hi guys.

- Hey Sue.

- I think a lot of people think Western art is just cowboys and Indians, and I have a gallery that's filled with landscape paintings and wildlife sculpture, and I've always felt like that's the most Western of Western art.

The landscape and the life in the landscape.

(lively music) - The current Western design features, It really does owe so much to Indigenous artists.

Because if you look at the history of the American West, Indigenous people were here for well over 10,000 years and what they were doing is they were creating what is the true, original functional art form through their different eating utensils, through their clothing, and through some of their ceremonial pieces as well.

- Western art is really special because it doesn't try to cover up the Western environment.

It tries to celebrate the Western environment.

So when you're in a Western art gallery or looking at all this furniture here, you see the same colors and lines that you would see on a hike, on a mountain trail.

Or if you're out in the sagebrush.

And that's something that I feel like a special for the West.

- There are misconceptions about Western functional art.

I think a lot of people, they hear that and they think, "Oh, yes, wagon wheel, chandeliers and very heavy furniture, very, very brown and kind of stuck in the 1950s.

Lots of antlers, heavy, heavy antlers.

I love antlers, and they're used all the time in today's Western functional art, but they're used in a new and fresh way.

(dramatic music) Most people who haven't engaged with Western functional art in any way for the last 50 years, would be astounded by what's being done today.

- [Narrator] To really understand and appreciate modern Western functional art, we need to acknowledge the driving influences and figures from the past that defined the Western aesthetic.

(gentle music) (lively music) - [Brian] William F. Cody, in the character of Buffalo Bill was so important in popularizing the American West and scenes of the West, and the general look and aesthetic of the West for audiences in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

(gentle music) - [Rebecca] Buffalo Bill was a marketing genius.

I would say he's an influencer, much like we have influencers today.

- [Chase] It is said that he, in stature, was somewhere between the Queen of England and the president of the United United States.

He was one of the most famous people in the world.

- I kind of compare him to the modern day show Yellowstone.

Buffalo Bill had that same effect back then, and he made the West accessible and romantic.

- He had been a Pony Express rider.

He'd been a scout for the Army.

He had been this, that and the other thing.

But he was an entrepreneur.

He was a promoter.

- [Rebecca] At the height of his "Wild West" show, he had upwards of 1200 employees.

- He had scores of cowboys and Native Americans who he worked with, including some tribal chiefs.

He had female sharpshooters.

He was in some ways an equal opportunity employer very early.

- Putting on one of these shows with 30 railroad cars full of animals, Native Americans, and I mean, you can imagine still the language barrier at the time, getting a couple hundred Native Americans to go to France, or London for a few months or to travel the United States.

- [Chase] They would do these huge outdoor events in really large arenas.

Tens of thousands of people would see these things.

He understood marketing and branding before that was a concept.

It was just in his bones.

The way he presented himself, the way he courted the press, the way he created posters that were put all over cities in advance of his group's arrival.

- [Rebecca] Buffalo Bill's style really did inform what we see now as the Western aesthetic.

When he entered the arena, he was on horseback, and he was suited out in a full buckskin beaded outfit with fringe and also beadwork that was done by Indigenous artists.

He always wore a cowboy hat, so he would ride in the arena.

He'd take off that hat, he'd salute the the crowd.

- [Wally] They didn't always dress that way.

That was like a stage play in many respects, but it was what people thought the West looked like.

- [Brian] Because Buffalo Bill helped set the standard for what we think it means to look and dress Western, his style has carried down through the years, and you can still see it in contemporary art and design.

- Oh man, this is going to sound like BS, it was sort of a magical approach to an interpretation of the West.

Here it was in front of you portrayed by stagecoach robberies and horses running wild and roundups and all of those things.

He put it together in this special little box that got unwrapped.

And what a great moment for this country and for the West.

And and I like to believe it's still all true.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] As famous as he was, Buffalo Bill wasn't single handedly shaping the image of the West around the world.

There were other factors at play.

- Dime novels became a huge thing around the same time.

During the Civil War, post-Civil War, Westerns were a subgenre of dime novels, and those started to be catered to youth too.

So young people were reading a bout the West and the excitement, and the animals, and the scenery, and the big open spaces that weren't crowded.

And remember, the more urban areas in Europe, in America, where suffering from the effects of industrialization.

Plus you had the gold rush in the late 19th century.

So there's this huge sort of interest in and in the West and movement toward it.

- [Narrator] For some people, it wasn't enough to read about and watch Western life, they wanted to live it.

- Even back in the old West, Easterners and folks from Europe spent a lot of time and money getting out to the remote places on the map in order to find adventure or experience their frontier fantasies.

And they loved appreciating the Western landscape, being part of ranch life, and not having to dress up for dinner.

- When I was a young, a guy, and I lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, and in New York growing up, I loved the Westerns that were on the local television station, and I would watch those, and they came on at a time when the sun was setting, and I would look through the windows behind the TV at the setting sun setting in the west, and I would see these cowboys riding and all that sort of thing.

And I thought, you know, what's it really like?

And had a chance to come out when I was 12 years old, which is right at that beginning when children really start to develop and, significant experiences that kids have at that age really sticks for life.

And boy, did this visit out to Valley Ranch when I was 12, in 1965, that stuck big time.

- [Chase] Dude ranches are while they still exist, they're not in the heyday anymore.

The heyday was sort of in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and enormous number of Americans, Europeans, and people from all over the world traveled to the mountain West to experience a rustic life on the range and to sort of play cowboy, if you will, for a week or longer.

Back in the 20s and 30s, they would come and stay for a month or the whole summer and go on, you know, eight week long pack trips in the Yellowstone wilderness.

The railroads were promoting working hand in hand with the dude ranches to bring people to the West and get them, utilizing these new travel options.

And they were helping sell this romantic vision of the West.

It was a lot of Easterners.

It wasn't just Easterners.

And many of those people ended up buying land out here or buying ranches.

- [Barron] Valley was established in 1915 by Larry Lanham and Wynn Brooks of Brooks Brothers, and they were New Yorkers, and their audience was the New York audience.

And that metropolitan group had never seen the West except through the lens of Western movies.

And so the opportunity to come out to this country, ride a horse, live the quote rough life, and enjoy the features of a dude ranch was an opportunity that many of those people just simply couldn't resist.

- [Chase] They were sold a romanticized version of the West, and it was a fully crafted environment.

The Western style was extended to everything from the plates you ate off to the furnishings and the curtains and tools in the fireplace.

- The reality, dude ranches is that people who came here to dude ranches had money.

And, I mean, and so they would put money into this community and to the people who lived here, to the artists who were creating things here, and they also brought influence, and they traveled.

Dude ranches have been around for over a hundred years.

So what would happen is they take the train back and they tell their friends about it, and it's just the same.

It was the, you know, old time social media.

They brought their friends who then brought their friends and they brought a level of patronage to this place and to the artists who live here.

- Dude ranches helped pioneer a distinctive style of Western art design because they wanted to offer their clients the atmosphere of a old trapper's cabin or a cowboy's ranch house, but with all of the comforts of modern life.

A lot of these dudes wanted to take their love for the West back home with them.

Or they bought a little piece of paradise out here, and they wanted to fill it up with the things that they loved about the West.

And a lot of those things were dude ranch-derived styles.

So this demand for a dude ranch aesthetic helped create a cottage industry of local arts, artists, and artisans to supply that distinctive Western furniture and artwork and design for people who loved the West.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] There was one artisan in particular who was able to capitalize on this demand for Western functional art.

His name was Thomas Molesworth, and he became the king of Western-style furniture.

- [Chase] Molesworth was a, really an art student.

He went to the Art Institute of Chicago in the height of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and he ended up in Montana.

And then he came down to Cody, and then he started this sort of furniture store that was just everyday offerings.

And then he started experimenting with what we would now call Western style objects and functional pieces.

And it didn't take long.

That became his thing.

And he, like Buffalo Bill, he was a marketing genius.

What we think of as Western is to a large extent, that style was kicked off by Buffalo Bill with the fringe, and the beadwork, and the hats, and the boots, and the Native American influenced garments and things like that.

But Molesworth took that ethos living here in Cody, Wyoming, and he applied it to functional art, crafting not just items, but entire environments.

- [Wally] Molesworth made these room scapes much like a landscape that he covered the room in the West.

And that was it.

He had as much fun doing that as Buffalo Bill must have had putting together the "Wild West" show.

- [Terry] Probably in the 30s and the 40s, was when people started really building larger houses, lodges, spending maybe the whole summer out west.

Really there was not a great resource out here other than some of the local builders, and some of them were quite talented, but some of it was pretty rustic.

Molesworth saw the opportunity and had a background in furniture, so he knew how to make it comfortable.

So he really developed a way to make factory-produced furniture that was both elegant but comfortable and still rustic.

And that brought a new generation of buyers in.

Because, you know, before that, it was kind of a man's type of furniture.

And now all at once, woman would allow it in the living room because you could actually sit in it.

(gentle music) - It's just like anybody who's, you know, interested in expensive cars.

I guess eventually you get to Ferraris or Lamborghinis or a Bugatti.

Same thing is here.

If you're interested in handmade furniture, you're going to you're going to find your way to Molesworth.

It's just inevitable.

(gentle music) - For me, he was the creative guy behind taking relatively mild interpretations of rustic furniture and moving it up.

He's the guy who made it.

Let me just say romantic furniture.

He really enlivened that spirit of the West within each of us.

(gentle music) - Molesworth ended up being a marketing genius.

You know, he put catalogs out, but more than anything, he really, really learned to mingle with his customers.

He became friends of many.

And these were titans of industry, you think about the fact Robert Woodruff, Coca-Cola, the Koe family with Standard oil, titans of industry that he is rubbing elbows with and all of their friends.

And so one commission led to the next.

(gentle music) - At first I was shocked at how high the prices were.

I could get, you know, ranch chair, ranch furniture chairs for 75, 100, 150 bucks, you know, an armoire two or 300 and the keyhole chairs, you know, were running 800, 900, 1100 dollars, "Oh, my God."

And then I saw a sideboard which is in the front foyer, and it was 10,500.

And I whined and bitched and complained and bought it.

- [Wally] I mean, some of it was humorous.

Some of it was in your face, some of it was, I can't tell you he ever made a quiet piece.

He took burls.

And most people who are familiar with burls says it's the burl dash on a Jaguar or Mercedes.

Got this wonderful.

Now Molesworth cut the burl down the middle, took both sides and placed it on the corners of a chair.

And I mean, that's just audacious.

The moose antlered wing chair.

Okay, you have this wonderful chair that has these moose antlers on it.

And you think, wow!

- [Chase] I think of him often in the same category as Frank Lloyd Wright in some ways, because when Wright was allowed to really run with things, he actually not only crafted the whole environment, he would design the dishes and even the dress that the hostess would wear.

And Molesworth, if he could have gotten away with designing the clothing for the hostess who was entertaining in one of his interiors, I'm sure he would have.

- [Wally] A room scape to me as much like a landscape.

And when you deal with a guy like Molesworth, he built that whole landscape within the room that took the furniture, the lighting, the drapery, the floor coverings and all of that and put it together.

And I suppose a version of the real West.

And within that there was art.

There was native weavings, native materials, wonderful beaded objects.

(lively music) - This is like really like living inside the Sistine Chapel.

This is the best of the best.

I like to tell people when I'm sitting at my breakfast table in the morning, having a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper.

My net worth went up just by the fact I was sitting in a Molesworth chair.

It may have gone up five or eight cents that day.

That's pretty cool stuff.

(gentle music) (saw whirring) - [Chase] Since Thomas Molesworth closed his shop in the 60s after 30 years, a 30 year run, is a pretty strong run to be making Western furniture.

But eventually he got old, he retired, he closed his shop.

- Noisy machine.

- [Chase] There were a handful of people who kind of picked up the torch loosely and ran with it, but it really wasn't until about 33 years ago that it all started to coalesce again with a handful of furniture makers, mostly who were influenced by Molesworth but brought their own ideas and vision and artistry to their work.

(hammer banging) (lively music) [Narrator] The late 80's and early 90's ushered in a surge of interest in Western style, sparked in part by the success of the 1990 film "Dances with Wolves".

The opening of the exhibition "Interior West: The Craft and Style of Thomas Molesworth" at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in 1989 and the Autry Museum in Los Angeles in 1990, prompted a rediscovery of Thomas Molesworth furniture.

With a couple of articles on Molesworth in The New York Times in 1989 and 1990, even the East Coast was talking about Western design.

- So we went down with John Blair and Ernie Marsh and Ernie did the silversmithing.

- [Narrator] A group of artisans in Cody, Wyoming, with a collaborative spirit and business savvy, realized that by just banding together they could take advantage of the moment.

(lively music) - When the momentum came, all of this huge dump that came on us with everybody wanted to know about Molesworth furniture, and the vision was, we had a chance to grab the spotlight and we could have a show where just bring all our stuff together, and all those wealthy people were in town and we'd sell our stuff.

We called ourselves the Master Artisans Guild.

- [Narrator] In 1993, the Master Artisans Guild organized the first Western Design Conference in Cody, Wyoming.

Artisans from around the country signed up to exhibit their work.

The conference moved to Jackson Hole in 2007, Meanwhile in Cody, a group of craftspeople united to form the Cody Western Artisans Guild, launching "Cody High Style", another highly selective exhibition that ran until 2012.

(lively music) (engine revving) A few years later, the nonprofit, By Western Hands was launched with a gallery museum and workshop space.

Several of these master artisans whose work has been inspired by Molesworth have participated in all these collaborations over the years, with the goal of preserving Western design and craftsmanship.

(lively music) - [Wally] That's a little amazing that there are still Molesworth-type chairs being built, much like Molesworth built them, and I suppose you could forge a Molesworth if you really put your mind to it.

Nobody does that.

They do their own thing.

- Kind of a labor of love doing carvings like this.

- [Wally] I used to say, "If you're going to copy Molesworth, your obligation is to make it better than he ever made it."

And by God, some people did.

(gentle music) - I try to do, like I call it modern Molesworth.

So Molesworth had flat arms, paddle arms where I try to round arms, just do a little bit off, use a little bit different colors than say red, black, stuff like that.

Step out and using grays and whites and different colors.

(gentle music) Different carvings in different aspects.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) Instead of using burls on the front leg for Molesworth, a lot of times I'll use knees or logs just to make it look, the Tim Lozier look.

(machine whirring) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - For a while, especially, I don't know, maybe 30 years ago, 20 years ago, something like that, a lot of especially men, it's like they wanted to recreate their childhood with, you know, Daniel Boone and cowboy influences.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) And so I took a lot of inspiration from Molesworth.

But then again, I reinterpret it in my style.

(gentle music) (tool whirring) (lively music) - [Narrator] When artisans put a piece of themselves into the work and aren't forced to cut any corners, it can be a very fulfilling process.

(lively music) - You know, we're selling art.

I mean it's studio furniture, it's artisan-made furniture.

It's not- It's not Ikea.

because they do good stuff or what they do.

But there's not a lot of design, a lot of art in it.

(lively music) (lively music continues) - I took the boots to a different level.

I wanted to incorporate sterling silver.

I wanted to incorporate turquoise.

I wanted boots that were art.

What I do, I put my heart into it.

I created over 85,000 different designs in my life so far, and it makes me happy, and there's a lot of things you can do in life.

But I found my niche.

This comes from the old Western pin-up girls that I loved, I still do.

I thought they were pretty cool.

So I put all the different girls, my version, and incorporated roses with them, some turquoise, and made them giddy up.

There they are.

A lot of work on that one too.

Scotty's angels 'cause they're all different.

(gentle music) - I can't say enough that it so helps when you love what you do.

You know, it's really- I haven't worked a day in my life.

(gentle music) - I took to clay and I, I warn other artists that just if you do clay, you're going to get addicted.

(gentle music) You get in it and you can't get out.

It's, that's what clay is about.

I mean, I love to draw and paint, but I will never not do clay.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) I can't even imagine a world without art.

I'm going to be 72 years old.

And if you take my beads away, I'll die.

(gentle music) (lively music) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) - [Narrator] With so much enthusiasm for the craft and the prices some master artisans are able to charge, it might be surprising that there's not a robust pipeline of upcoming young craftspeople.

(lively music) Many new artisans face daunting challenges that can derail a promising career.

- My very simple boots start at 1,800 and the most expensive one I sold so far was 85,000.

I put 228 different colors into them.

(lively music) And then a painting of something like this, When you got to paint it two bristles on a paintbrush, talk about time consuming.

(lively music) (tool whirring) (gentle music) - I think sometimes young artists will see a successful older artist and say, "Okay, yeah, this is going to be easy," you know?

I can sell a piece for $10,00, you know, and I won't have to, sell many to make a living.

But what you don't realize is that, that artist has probably been working on that since childhood to get to that point.

And so sometimes you get a question like, how long does it take you to produce that?

Kind of a standard in the art world is it's like, "Oh, okay well, you know, I'm 55 years old.

So it's taken that long to make that piece."

(gentle music) - You know, I'm gonna be straight up with you.

I took hours one time on a big project, and I found that I was making less than $5 an hour, so I don't I don't keep time because for me personally, that would be discouraging.

So I do it.

Yes, for money because I have to eat and buy new supplies.

But I also do it for love.

(gentle music) - They see what we're selling that piece for now, but you got to remember we have 30 years or 20 years of experience in this.

Nowadays they want instant gratification or that instant pay, and it just doesn't happen.

You have to put in your time to make sure everything is correct.

The sanding, the joinery, the carvings, everything has to go together before you reach that level of becoming a master craftsman, I think, and that's the hardest thing for people to realize, is it takes time.

(gentle music) - The only commodity that you have in this life to sell is time.

If I'm building a piece of furniture by hand, it's going to take a lot longer than what you would compare it to Ikea's all machine made.

There's a lot of design time, a lot of sketching and model making, and model building, and and refining ideas.

There's a lot of that kind of time that goes into it, most of which I can't charge for.

(lively music) There's also and the fact that I've been doing this for 40 years, so you can ask me how long it took to build that particular piece and I can give you numbers of the actual build time and actual design time, but I can't give you the numbers for how long I sat in classes and how long I've been thinking about this, and how much time I've spent throughout my life developing the skills and the aesthetic that went into it.

All stuff is, has got to be taken into account as well.

(gentle music) - The first five years for me was really hard.

The only wasting I was getting was hot dogs and hamburgers and maybe a couple cold beers.

So if they think you're gonna become rich, especially with the prices these days, it's going to take time.

Doesn't matter what they're going to be an apprentice doing.

(gentle music) - So I select my hammer.

- [Narrator] It's not just the time that can be a deterrent for new potential artisans.

- Clean my hammer.

- [Narrator] There are some significant startup costs and relationship-building involved.

- Getting started as an artist is a challenge.

Rarely is there immediate success.

You have to have talent, but you also have to have a lot of perseverance.

And you have to take no for an answer.

(gentle music) I've had a lot of rejection because I wasn't there and I had to go through an apprenticeship time and then finally this came along and I had to have a job to earn money.

This is where my rivets go, here.

(gentle music) Okay.

And that's how I make a handle.

While I was training to do this and while I was building my business, I worked at night delivering pizzas for Domino's.

And then I worked during the day training to do this and making my own work.

And so that's what it takes.

And I was working from 07:30 in the morning till about midnight every night for a couple of years.

And that's what it takes to really establish yourself as an artist.

It's kind of like working two jobs but only getting paid for one.

So, (laughs) that's what it's like.

(gentle music) - I drove a school bus for three or four winters and ended up mechanic-ing in the middle parts of the day.

I never wanted to be a mechanic, you know?

I don't know, I learned about it, you know, that's one thing about me, is whatever it is I was doing, I try to do the best job that I possibly could, and that doesn't mean I was a good mechanic.

So to me, that was all kind of a lead up to getting here.

(dramatic music) The startup costs includes learning how to do it and standing there swinging a hammer until your arms are sore and you're sweating.

(dramatic music) (machine banging) Then you got to buy the equipment you can't make any money without a power hammer.

So you got to buy a power hammer and you got to have a shop to put it in.

(hammer banging) And going to learn from somebody.

I went down to New Mexico, a place called Ro, and worked in a shop there.

I mean, it was in the late 80s when I went down that way.

So I don't, you know, I was probably getting three bucks an hour.

I didn't make any money down there.

And I had to shoe horses at night.

And I've met a veterinarian, that he'd he'd pitch me some horseshoeing jobs and so I could survive.

But I learned a lot of stuff.

(hammer banging) But it's a little difficult to to get going.

And then you've got to sell whatever you're making, you've got to get it sold somehow.

(gentle music) - Yeah, well, it is tough, making a living as an artist full time.

I mean, you've got to get up and prove up every day.

There's nothing coming in unless you're putting work out, ever.

And if you make a mistake, you don't get paid for it.

It's very rewarding if you can survive.

(lively music) - When you think about the facility and paying rent, the cost of electricity or gas, if that's how you're firing, the cost of the kiln, all the furniture that goes in it, the equipment you have, your wheel, all the tools you have the clay, shipping heavy clay to Lander, Wyoming from anywhere is nuts.

But if you're out there trying to make a living at it, and not only all that equipment and the time it takes and the expertise it takes, then you have to market.

And this is just art.

This isn't just pottery.

This is all art.

When do you find time to market?

And who likes that?

(laughs) - A person needs to spend probably more time selling themselves, basically.

And that's hard for me.

It's hard for a lot of people.

- What I found is that starting a business is, it's a challenge because you have the art side of the business, but then you have the business side of the business, and there are things and a lot of artists come to it with a lot of gifts and talents and make really cool things that they don't have trouble selling.

It's the other side, it's the business side that becomes the difficulty.

Because as you begin to grow, you suddenly have to deal with taxes and you have to deal with different government requirements and things like that.

And that is something I was not very good at.

I've gotten in trouble with various government agencies because I didn't fill out the paperwork on time and I realized that I needed help with that because very often in the genetic package, the bookkeeper gene does not come along with the creative gene.

And and so I had to get people who were really good at just keeping up with taxes and filling out forms and applying to shows and answering emails, answering telephone calls.

Once your business began to grow, as you have a lot of interaction with your clients and it's very hard to be in the middle of a creative process and then suddenly have to take a phone call from a client.

And that sort of disrupts your whole creative process.

(dramatic music) (grinder whirring) - As an artist, you have to be a multitasker.

You wear a lot of hats, anything from logistics to marketing to production, it's a lot.

And, I do know a lot of extremely talented artists that can't handle all those aspects.

And it it affects them and their success.

For me, one of the hardest things is getting out of the shop long enough to do the more formal parts of the business where maybe I'm applying to a show or I'm talking to some gallery people or, I mean, that to me is more difficult than the actual production.

And it's kind of like doing your taxes, you know, you just want to wait till the last minute.

- It's not something that you can just come in and in a couple of weeks start making money.

It just does not work like that.

Every single person that is mentored or wanted to be mentored before has said, "Well, I didn't think it was going to be this hard."

And I've said some things.

(laughs) It's like it's hard work.

It's a life's work that you have to be willing to, your heart's got to be in it.

And there's the hobby level, and then there's the professional part of it, and how do you build a business?

And it's tricky.

It takes I mean, I'm 74 and I'm still figuring it out.

- Pretty much if someone says that they want to do it, I say, "Well, just show up at my studio."

And I put them to work and about half of them go, this is for the birds, this is a lot harder than I thought.

They just think, "Oh, you know, get to make some art and all of that."

And it's like, "No, it's hard work and metal smithing is dirty, it's hard, it is very physical, and it is not an easy craft to do."

And half of them leave within the first day and which is fine.

They had a romantic idea and they saw the reality of it, and that's okay.

And then other people, they stick on and they just keep going.

And I keep throwing all the hard stuff at them, and they just keep on taking it.

And that's great, and I love doing that.

- They don't have schools for this kind of stuff.

This is something you got to either teach yourself or have somebody teach you.

It's not in a book.

It's you get out there and go to work.

Get your hands dirty.

True.

And there's not many people out there that want to do it anymore.

It's unfortunate that this is going to be a lost art.

It's only a matter of time.

- I'm gonna first put it in really light to establish it.

- [Narrator] While many artisans are individually teaching the younger generations through workshops and apprenticeships.

The Cody-based nonprofit by Western Hands is working with the University of Wyoming to create a more scalable model so that this specialized knowledge is not lost forever.

Artisan mentors coordinate with university faculty to teach hands-on classes that are part of the curriculum.

- We had two workshops last year one in metalsmithing and one in sculpture, and the one in sculpture was leather working, and there was a silversmith that came up and worked in metalsmithing.

- The conversation went into like, what set his saddles apart from like, the saddles you can buy in Murdock's.

And he said, well, while he was growing up, when he would go to the convenience store, he would buy a bag of chips and like there was no air in it.

It was just a bag full of chips.

And he's like, nowadays when I go to the convenience store, only half the bag of chips is like, there's only half chips in the bag.

Like, what the heck was he paying for?

So he said, "That's what I do that sets me apart from everyone else."

I don't cut any corners."

He said his artworks are like bags of chips, except his bags of chips are just bursting with chips.

And that has just kind of changed my whole outlook on my artwork.

- [Megan] I was not anticipating the material to be so much fun to work with.

So I could have sat there for like two days straight just hammering away.

I loved it.

(laughs) - To connect these generations together for me is just so natural, and these aren't things that you can find in a book or even on YouTube.

It takes actually working side by side with these artisans to figure out what they have figured out over their lifetime.

- I had a great conversation with Ernie and he does mostly metalsmithing, but he works with foundries around the country to get his pieces cast because he does have the facilities there for like, giant molten bronze stuff.

But while I was talking with him, he talks about just kind of the workforce today, how there's not enough young people willing to do it, and how a lot of his connections around the country are closing down because they're all too old and the work is backbreaking, literally.

(machine whirring) - Well, I used to be inspired mostly by the old timers, but, you know, most of those guys have passed, and now I kind of find myself being the old timer in the trade.

And it's it's not as fun as I thought it was going to be.

But I get my inspiration now from the young people that come to me and want to learn.

- The hope is that they meet students and we get students connected as early as possible, in their time, in their degrees.

And then over time out of that, maybe a few years later, you have a few people who will then partner with a master craftsperson long term.

The goal is to not let this knowledge die away, literally or like in some sort of like possibility where all the knowledge and all the expertise that the By Western Hands, master craftsperson has acquired and they're not necessarily teachers, how is that going to be passed on to somebody else?

And so what we're hoping for is to like pull students in, see who's interested and then focus them so that maybe a few of them will be able to take on that knowledge and pass it on themselves.

- He spoke to me directly about like what I was interested in.

I gave him this weird answer about, "Oh, I don't know, I think I'll get a job doing so-and-so so I can like, support my artwork on this side."

And he really like, he pulled for me what I genuinely wanted to do, which was like, the dream is to make art and sell it for $30,000 and do only that.

That's the dream.

And that was kind of the first time I had said that out loud.

And he told me, he said, "If you just keep that in your mind and keep telling yourself that's what you want and remind yourself it's going to happen eventually."

- I do think that this could be a model for the universities to follow.

But higher education is changing in a number of different ways, and I think we have to be open to thinking about education in new ways.

And so us reaching out and making this collaboration is quite unique.

It's unique to our part of the country.

It's unique to the artists who we're working with.

But I think in general higher education needs to think outside of the box for new ways to make connections for students in the in the 21st century.

- [Narrator] Many of today's master artisans are aging out of the craft.

And while the supply of future artisans is critical for the preservation of these uniquely American crafts, without the demand side, there's no business.

- I have a lot of people wanting to learn, and I've got a lot of students that I try to share with, but it's equally as important to try to educate the public because these people are going to have to find interested people to support their work too.

So it's it's important.

And I've got an advantage.

My customers grew up twirling cap guns and watching "Rawhide" on TV, you know?

But since then, not so much.

It's important that we find people that are interested in the West as a whole, and we give them a reason to be a part of it, maybe buy a part of it and maybe admire it in their own home, if not in their tack room or on their horse.

Just display a nice saddle, you know?

- Well, unfortunately, it's already become a throwaway society.

If it breaks, you throw it out and buy a new one.

Price comes down, it's produced.

So it it's not that expensive.

There's a few people out there that really appreciate fine quality.

It doesn't matter if it's a boot, a shoe, a bench, a table, a piece of jewelry.

There's people out there that appreciate that.

- Being able to build things of value that will last a hundred years if they're taken care of has real value.

And for the craftsmen, there's a lot of satisfaction of making something that is so beautiful that when the client sees it, they start crying.

And that's an amazing experience.

- [Narrator] We can imagine a world without American Western functional art, or any art for that matter.

But do we really want to?

- Our world is so full of junk and clutter.

I think a handmade mug, for instance, a mug, or you're setting a table with your hand-thrown pottery just gives you more of an attachment to an everyday affair of drinking a cup of coffee or eating your sandwich and it's not going to hold water any better than the Kmart mug, but the feeling of it if you bought it, if you knew the artist, if you made it, if your daughter made it, or your Mom made it, it has so much ritual and meaning to it.

- [Brad] I think a lot about function and aesthetic and beauty.

Those are things that we all need, I mean, somehow they make life seem a little better.

- I think being associated or being next to or owning something that is well built makes you feel good.

It's like a nice painting, you know, you look at it and like, that puts a smile on my face.

- I think it's very important that there still be handcrafts.

I am all about technology.

I think technology is a good thing.

And I think that our lives have been improved a lot by technology.

However, when a new technology comes into play, it's replacing an older way of doing things.

And I think that it is important to take on the new but not lose the old.

And so for me, what I love to do is I love to handmake things.

And there's something about something being handmade.

The manufactured things are good.

They are less expensive.

And that makes a lot of things accessible to people.

And that's a good thing.

But on the other hand, you lose something because if a machine makes something from beginning to end, it has the soul of a machine.

- There is something charming, beautiful, exotic about craftsmanship, and I think that much of the furniture today is built by very intricate machines.

It's cut out.

I mean, you can cut out a lot of things out of a plywood sheet.

You can cut out of a lot of things in a foreign country to put together and bring it to these United States, but you can't cut out these pieces with a machine.

- Western art and design throughout its history has been a way for people to express why they love the American West.

And if today's craftspeople don't pass that on to a new generation, we will lose a way to express why we love this place and why we think it's special.

- And the crazier the world gets, the less intimate the world gets, with each other and with the technology and everything like that.

This is so honest.

It has so much integrity.

It has value.

I mean, this is, very emotional for me.

Beauty is the heart and the soul of America.

(people laughing) (gentle music) From the very beginning of human beings, creating art and in cave paintings and making beautiful things.

It's an essential part of us as human beings.

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