The Shoshone Name
In the early ninetine thirties, Tom Molesworth opened a furniture business he called Shoshone Furniture Company. He chose this name for the geography and culture with which time has painted the region he lived in. The north fork of the Shoshone River runs through Shoshone Canyon to join the south fork at Buffalo Bill Reservoir. The river swiftly flows on past Cody Wyoming where Tom established his furniture business. Further south is the town of Shoshoni. It is also pronounced with a long E sound at the end. In 1891, the year after Tom was born, President Benjamin Harrison designated the forest west of Cody that stretches all the way south to Lander along the eastern slope of the continental divide, Shoshone National Forest. This is the first forest in the nation to be designated National. My granddad, my father and I, chose for our businesses the same name given to a language group, forest, canyon, river, and towns and streets throughout the west.
The Shoshone speaking people have inhabited the territory that today stretches from California north to Idaho, across the Rockies to Wyoming and Montana, reaching into Canada and as far southeast as Texas and Mexico. They were many diverse bands at the same time being the predominate people of one language group living in this area. These bands were known by various names originating from observations of each particular culture. A sinuous hand gesture in sign language depicting woven grass or snake people for instance, identified those living in the Great Basin. Encounters with people speaking this language elsewhere in the west, inspired names derived from a main food source or whether they walked or rode. Their spoken language however, is what identified them more than anything else did. They called themselves Newe, the people.
Molesworth Furniture from Shoshone Furniture Company has always been made from a fine artistic eye that weaves many furniture styles with the color of the western United States. These styles of primitive ranch, sophisticated Mission, Arts and Crafts and aspects of Gustav Stickley were brought together with beautiful materials and cultural art from all over western North America by Tom to define his own interior decorative style, Molesworth Furniture. This furniture my granddad built survives and is collectible today because of its quality construction and timeless appeal to those of us who love the inspirational beauty and grandeur this exceptional part of the planet enjoys. Shoshone Furniture Company will always try to manifest this inspiration.
I have kept the name my granddad chose for this company for continuity, family, and for awareness of some history. For me, the name Shoshone colorfully illustrates an important and definitive qualifier for the words, "western states". I can't enjoy the empowering beauty and bright honesty of this land without imagining what it was like when we humans first came here. This name for the language of the earliest remembered people living in this vast, beautiful geography where I have lived all my life, is also a name that designates this company. I celebrate my lovely corner of the world as my granddad did with the name he chose for our vision of western interior design.
Thomas Canada Molesworth II
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