Photography: Marisa Anderson

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The furniture we use every day tends to be one of the most overlooked commodities in today’s society. Our friend, William Graeber has set out to change that idea and share what woodworking is to him: a rare and forgotten art.

William wears the Plaid Wool Ivy Cap and the Brushed Twill Flannel

Photography by Eric Granado

It started in woodshop class at his middle school. William became surrounded by power tools, saw dust and all things woodworking; but it wasn’t until he was 19 when he started building furniture. When he was 23, he was designing, building, and repairing furniture for residential and commercial clients around the Central Oklahoma area.

More than 20 years after opening his first shop, William is proud to be Oklahoma’s only full line supplier of handcrafted custom furniture and I mean custom. He sits down with every client and gets an idea of what they’re looking for. Some clients give him free reign over a project.

As you enter his shop, there’s a sign that says, “Please allow 6-8 week delivery on all orders”. Behind the shop sits an airplane wing that a client donated to him to be converted into a table. Right when you walk in, there’s an area to the left with an overhead light, and two studio lights. His Nikon D800E is covered in years of saw dust. There’s a method to all this madness.

“We aren’t a large factory pumping out hundreds of pieces, we’re a group a craftsman, that love what we do, and we take great pride in the fact that each piece we build is built with our own hands.”

His furniture has been featured by media outlets like HGTV and House Beautiful. He built and installed every cabinet, table and desk at Cure nail salon in El Paso, Texas. Yet, with so many projects on-deck, he still takes pride in his craft.

As you scroll through his website and social media, there’s multiple videos showcasing his craft. There’s one video in particular that caught my eye. He shows his process of taking a knot out of a table top. He chisels out the knot and disposes of the remaining dead wood. He then proceeds to take a piece of paper over the empty space and color over it. He shapes a piece of wood and glues it into the empty area and sands it down. It’s the small details he captures that shows exactly what happens during the construction process.

Rugged quality denim you can work in. Shop here.

“To me, furniture design and construction are still art forms. I take great pride in carrying on the wonderful traditions of putting pencil to paper, sketching ideas, engineering parts, and putting together one of a kind pieces the world has never seen.”

William loves giving back to the community. His website has tips on how to treat your furniture. Want to inquire about a dining table but don’t know where to start? He has a guide for that, too. Visit here.

There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars. – Jack Kerouac

Since Doug and Emily moved into a van months ago, their monotonous 9-5 lives have been transformed into an exciting, never-ending adventure of exploring the places they had always dreamt of. Each new day spent traveling gives them the taste of freedom they haven’t felt since they were just kids playing in the sand. The wind constantly blows through their hair and the endless road begs to be discovered.

Part of the new Stetson Seeker collection, the Stargazer is an extra wide-brimmed wool felt hat designed to protect against the elements of the city or the outdoors.

The first stop on their journey was the cowboy state. Jackson, a small quaint mountain town nestled in the valley of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Here, they shared some beers with an old friend at a local saloon and gathered enough firewood and grub for a weeks worth of camping in the Tetons and Yellowstone. With their rig stocked up and spirits high, they set off to Shadow Mountain, a dispersed cang paradise that overlooked the entire Grand Teton valley and mountain range.

After driving thirty minutes up steep, rocky switchbacks, they pulled up to a little slice of heaven on top of Shadow Mountain unscathed. Opening the van doors, they greeted their new backyard for the evening — a 360-panoramic view of the Grand Teton valley and mountain range. Without hesitation, they cracked open beers, enkindled their firewood and began cooking over the cast iron as the sun fell over the Grand Teton mountain range. Only the sounds of crackling fire wood and their soft voices could be heard through the thin evening air. Again, they are constantly reminded how bittersweet this life can be.

The Pioneer is an updated take on the 1865 original Boss of the Plains, designed by John B. Stetson—one of Stetson’s most legendary, original styles

The next stop was Yellowstone. Spanning over two million acres, Yellowstone offers some of the most diverse landscapes and ecosystems in the world. From its expansive sylvan valleys home to several wolf packs to its volcanic geysers erupting water vapor into the atmosphere, this park is a feast for the senses. The mission for the next few days was to explore as much of the park as possible.

On the first day in the park with only a couple hours of daylight to spare, they got their first glimpse of wildlife off the main road. Now, this wasn’t the average bison or elk grazing. They got to witness a grizzly bear sitting proud on top of a dismantled elk carcass. Whenever an animal carcass is located in the park, there are park rangers watching over the scene at all times for good safety measures. Grizzlys can become extremely territorial over carcasses. According to the park ranger, this specific grizzly had claimed rights to the elk carcass a day ago after chasing off a pack of wolves.

Picking the brains of park rangers is a fantastic way to learn about wildlife behavior and the best places in the park to view them. While talking with the park ranger for five minutes, they learned that one of the best spots in the lower 48 states to view grizzly bears was at Yellowstone’s own, Pelican Valley. Instantly, they were hooked. They set forth at dawn on the Pelican Creek Trail to hopefully see multiple bears.

A soon-to-be classic in the new Stetson Seeker collection, the Quicklink is a Western-inspired, outdoor-ready, firm felt hat

Our last morning in Yellowstone was spent watching a wolf pack roam the furthest reaches of Lamar Valley. Crowds of visitors and ‘wolf watchers’ hugged the side of the road to catch a glimpse of a wolf pack. The only way to see the wolves was to look through a decent pair of binoculars because they were about 800m away. Peering through binoculars, we watched grey and black wolves scour the valley like mischievous villains.

With snow on the horizon, they did what they knew best — hit the road. Doug turned the key to start the engine and they left Yellowstone in the dust. As they rumbled their way to the Utah desert, the wind blew through their hair with not a worry in the world.

Ramontay McConnell comes from three generations of bull riding, some of which are hall of famers. It’s safe to say the rodeo and ranch life are a deep part of his history.

Photography by Jesse Cornelius

The Stetson 1520 jean has a mid-rise and a relaxed fit with a boot leg opening.

Growing up on a cattle farm in Mississippi, his family focused on raising bulls bred for the rodeo. Through that life experience he gained toughness, humility and a hard work ethic that are a part of who he is today. Every stage of his life has had some involvement in the sport. Even as a student athlete who played football at Arizona State, he still held the passion and the longing for the rodeo from a distance and helped foster it by studying agriculture.

After college Ramontay moved to Oregon where he currently lives preparing for the next stages of his career. With title belt buckles from both the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo and the Arizona Black Rodeo, Ramontay pursues moving onto a bigger platform. He pushes towards the end goal of building his own home, earned from the hard work of his hands and the skills he has as a rodeo rider.

Ramontay McConnell currently resides in Oregon where he stables his horse Ocean and prepares for the next rodeo tour. He calls Oregon his home for now, but he envisions building a house in a place like Montana after he’s done with his rodeo career. Being able to raise cattle and enjoy the freedoms of sprawling land that were alive and well in the Old American West, are the simple luxuries he hopes for in his future.

Introducing Fall 2019 new arrivals for men & women.

Photography by Marisa Anderson

The American West is a wildly fascinating thing. For over a century, art and film has highly romanticized scenes of six shooters and saloons, cowboys and indigenous, and horses galloping through rattlesnake country. For better or worse, grandiose Spaghetti Westerns with cast members falling on a spectrum from good to ugly have shaped how the world thinks of today’s American West. With so much focus on what it once was, the American West of today is often times overlooked. Some people even think it no longer exists.

Photography by Sam Raetz

Open Road 6x in Caribou

Multi-faceted artist Dani Vergés is doing his part in changing that.

Dani’s portfolio is filled with vivid scenes of cowboys moving cattle, summers in the branding pen, bucking broncos, wild bison roaming, and more. His gift to inspire thought with minimal brushstrokes is an impressive talent. With a style that is extraordinarily simple yet challenging, Dani has been drawing and painting ranch life in the American West since he was a child. The subjects of his paintings and overall interest in what today’s American West really is like has always surprised his peers at first though.

That’s because Dani doesn’t live in the West. Or the United States. Or even North America. Dani was born and raised in Barcelona, Spain, and now lives just outside the city. “I was always into things other Spanish folks weren’t — especially country music and the culture of the Western United States,” Dani said laughingly. His love for the West originated by spending time with his grandfather, who would show him films and National Geographic magazines depicting ranch life in the United States. He was so enamored that he began to recreate scenes he had seen with a pencil and watercolors. Dani’s grandfather noticed his rare talent early on, and encouraged him to sit down every day to draw once he had finished his school work.

When Dani’s grandfather passed away, his grandmother gave him a stack of his own artistic creations from his childhood. Dani’s grandfather had saved them for him.

Dani is a graphic designer by trade, but is perpetually channeling his creativity into a wide array of mediums. While he attended a university to study art, he wasn’t there long. “It was a great place to meet girls, but I didn’t really enjoy my classes or the teachers. So I left. I suppose I’ve always had issues with authority”. Dani continued, “I’m self taught. This has always been something that I’ve craved. I feel like I need to paint and I want to paint scenes from the West. It’s something I enjoy working at everyday, and I always try to be patient with myself.” Dani’s simple style is unquestionably a product of his graphic design background, as he is constantly working on logos (where almost always, less is more) for his clients.

When Dani was asked how he stayed creative with his painting:

“Creativity is one of those few things that the more you use it the more you have it. I have a creative job [as a graphic designer] because I wanted to be sure creativity was a constant in my life. I think that helps my painting a lot. Once i’m in my personal studio, I have the freedom to just do what i want. I don’t make a living off of my painting, I don’t have to answer to anyone. The only pressure I have comes from myself. Painting is my form of meditation.”

Dani was so compelled by painting and the West that he eventually accepted a temporary position at a ranch in Southern Colorado to work. It was there where he was finally able to capture Western scenes with his art firsthand (he also assisted in typically ranch work such as fixing fence and brandings). Dani would send photos home to friends and family back in Spain, and would have to explain to them he wasn’t on a movie set and that they were real people doing everyday work.

Dani has been coming back to the United States as often as he can in order to be in the place where he feels most at peace. And it’s no doubt that his grandfather, the driving force behind both his painting and love for the American West, would be incredibly proud of him.