Cowgirl Furniture Maker
by Thea Marx
With Diane Ross’s adept hands and keen sense of balance and design, old barns become charming cabinets and standing birch trees a bed gracing magazine pages worldwide. This extraordinary furniture maker is one of the few women in the business and she has established a niche with her elegant rustic furniture that doesn’t need a log home for comfort, it’s perfectly at ease in nearly every environment including ultra contemporary.
For thirty years, her intrepid spirit has wandered the West in search of inspiration and materials. Her experiences in the Southwest and on Montana ranches driving her practical, but creative process to pieces that always pay homage to her first, a bent willow chair. A furniture maker, she was sure she would never be growing up. Her father was a cabinet maker, but wouldn’t let her in the shop, she was a girl.
As a young, single mother she struck out to follow her dreams which meant studying Range Management and Soil Science at Montana State University in Bozeman. On the way, she found herself living in a tent in West Yellowstone, Montana with her two children waiting tables to pay the bills and save for college. Her need to be close to her children drove her to search for ways they could be together more than not. She turned down a coveted job with the BLM in favor of making a chair she saw on the cover of Mother Earth Magazine. The idea of making furniture meant they could be together gathering willows, searching the area for materials and creating collectively. One chair led to many and many led to a following. When the government registries where closed after graduation proclaiming no jobs were available, she didn’t even miss a beat, she kept on making furniture.
From a willow chair to elaborate cabinets is not easy for someone who has not been trained as a cabinet maker, but true to her spirit, she taught herself. “People would say ‘I like this. Can you do it?’” says Diane. “I would research it, figure it out and make it. That is how I learned.” Eventually her father came to help her in her shop in Willow Creek, Montana, acknowledging what she was doing was “real” woodworking and enjoyed his time with his daughter as she created influential pieces in the world of western furniture.
On the river bottom where Lewis and Clark camped and where bears, moose, elk and coyotes are prevalent, Diane creates pieces like the Cowgirl Cupboard: pretty on the outside, practical on the inside. The simple cabinet is hand rubbed with a red patina, carved willow designs and hand forged horse head draw pulls. She created this piece for herself when she was working cows everyday and rising at 4 am. She needed something that would hold everything she needed for the day in one place so she could roll out of bed, dress and still have time for coffee. The piece even has a place for her halter, chinks, hat and a grate to place her boots on. Then there are pieces with names like the Gypsy Queen goes to Cody. An exquisitely, edgy piece out of reclaimed oak, fused glass doors with interior lighting, glass shelves and secret velvet lined drawer.
Unique or deadly practical, this cowgirl furniture maker has a way of making the pieces strikingly beautiful, all the while evoking the natural and that universal yearning to have nature a part of one’s living spaces.
Diane is an artist on contemporarywesterndesign.com. She was invited to attend Women Who Design the West and was inducted into the Stetson Craftsman Alliance in September 2010.
