Cowboy Chic:
Western Style Comes Home
by Chase Reynolds Ewald
$40 (160 page hardcover)

The newest western decor represents an evolution in sophistication.  In addition to the now seeming ubiquitous dude ranch style furniture, western furnishings today range from meticulous leather wrapped armoires to petrified stone table tops on fantastically curved juniper bases, from headboards inset with strips of beadwork to rustic desks made from woods not traditionally western.  While there are still plenty of mounted heads on the walls in the West, lighting fixtures range from the traditional cut metal silhouettes  to three dimensional cast bronze pieces by fine artists.  The river rock fireplace still predominates, but there's also a place for hand carved mantelpieces depicting a trout stream or local wildlife that represents hundreds of hours of painstaking work.