Inspired by Hollywood westerns of the 1930s, this rustic furniture style is riding high again.

In a woeful Los Angeles warehouse-crammed to the corners with cast-aside couches, beat-up sideboards, and chairs with more broken arms and legs than a jinxed football team-Neil Korpinen found a prize. Under a packing blanket, with furniture on top, he found the perfect sofa for his remodeled home in the desert.
Even though springs were punching through the cushions, the sofa, with its serpentine spindles and arms as wide and flat as boat paddles, had a special character. "It was rustic-the kind of furniture cowboys would have, if cowboys had furniture," says Neil, an interior designer. "I took a look at one leg and there was a horseshoe burned into it. I thought, My God, somebody even branded it!"

What he would later learn is that the brand denoted a piece of original Monterey furniture, a style unique to the California Arts and Crafts tradition. Produced by Mason Manufacturing Company in Los Angeles from the 1920s until World War II, the furniture represented design themes based on nostalgia for the Old West and its many Hispanic influences. Monterey, which flourished when Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, and Gene Autry rode tall in their celluloid saddles, decorated homes of dozens of celebrities and became a staple to elite, but rugged, western-style interiors.

Neil and his interior design partner Eric Erickson hunted all over Southern California for stray pieces of Monterey, then moved them to a 1930s rancho-style house in Palm Springs. "The style of the house, and our interests in collecting all kinds of things western, actually drove the interior design," Neil said. "It's a classic type of house that was built here in the mid-1930s, when this area was becoming a Hollywood hot spot."

Typical of the architectural style, each room has its own set of double doors that lead to garden areas. The home's three bedrooms and kitchen all open up onto an expansive 25x35-foot living room. "We call it the lobby," Neil jokes.
Remodeled in the 1960s, much of the house's original character lay hidden or troweled over. Wall-to-wall carpeting smothered a cement floor, originally stained and incised into grids to resemble clay tiles. A mansard-style mantelpiece disguised the stone fireplace. Everything had been painted a 1960s shade of aqua. Neil and Eric rescued the period details that would be familiar to any fan of B-grade westerns. The result was a fitting backdrop for Monterey.

"The furniture was based on a chair that was in an old Cisco Kid movie," Neil says. "A designer who saw the movie put together a line of furniture based on the chair for a California department store, and they called it Monterey. It's a bit kitschy, but what's great about it is that it was designed to look like it came from another time and place."

It's also easy to live with. "It's very utilitarian," Neil says. "Look at the arms on the chairs. They're wide enough to hold a plate. I like the proportions and how sturdy it is. Still, I can appreciate that it's really fine art-fine art meeting fine craft."

Companies such as Imperial, Montecito, and Coronado reacted to Monterey's success by introducing their own collections, but they couldn't replicate Monterey's ironwork, hand painting, and variety (Mason produced 120 different types of pieces in the first four years). "Monterey was the most inventive," Neil says. And that makes it the most charming and valuable for collectors.
So what are the chances of finding another piece of Monterey hidden under a blanket in that musty shop? "If it were there today," Neil says, "it would be in the window, with lights flashing around it."