Furniture is the Soul of Montana Home
By Thea Marx
Photos Alpine Log Homes www.alpineloghomes.com JK Lawrence Photography www.jklawrencephoto.com and Chip Pankey www.chippankey.com
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Real snow inspired Scott and Carolyn Heppel’s home in Montana. Real snow and a book, that is. Avid cross-country skiers, Scott and Carolyn had never experienced the magnificent snow of the Rocky Mountains until a meeting found them in the middle of some of the finest. “We were instantly attracted to the Montana winter,” they say. Which is not something you typically hear about the piles of snow and cold temperatures that settle into the Rockies each winter.
The book was Cowboy High Style. The artist was Jimmy Covert. The rest is history. Scott and Carolyn started building their dream home by collecting one-of-a-kind pieces of western art furniture. The home was literally built around the furniture. Each year the couple would make a pilgrimage to Cody, Wyoming for the annual Western Design Conference to scout the exhibition floor and seek inspiration. There they met many of the artists. They let fate play forward knowing that as the space developed and inspiration struck, the piece and the artist would be right. “Many pieces were a collaborative effort,” says Carolyn. “We would give dimensions and configurations, artists would listen and start to work on an idea. It is from that effort that we built our home and we love every piece.” It meant a lot to Scott and Carolyn to know the artists who were making their furniture and it was important to them to support the western furniture tradition.
Each room has a theme and only one piece of furniture is historic. The rest are contemporary pieces created for this Montana home, which, in Scott’s words, “became the soul of the home.”
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