Stephen’s A Consignment Gallery

This place is quite large and takes some time to traverse. Many unique items. The quailty is there. But…
The prices and the price tags are entertaining. Some price tags are fading due to their age. Many items are priced so that the owners can come back and visit it… for years. We call this «off site storage».

Right on the crazy busy Cerrillos Road next to an industrial machine rental place is an unassuming building chock full of nice furniture, artwork, and weirdo knick-​knackery.
This was my go-​to shop for decorating my house when I lived in SF. I could spend hours picking over all the different items. Yes, it can be hit or miss. You’ll find gross naïve-​art dog portraits next to excellent framed prints. It takes some work to find the gems. And it’s a very large space. But there are some winners.
Sometimes I’ve managed to get some wiggle room on the prices but not many times. And the prices are sometimes a bit too much
Examples of what I’ve bought here over the years:

Signed and numbered Henry Moore lithograph (yes really)
Framed Toulouse-​Lautrec poster
Excellent framed Fernand Leger poster
heavy wood mid-​century lamp
leather-​covered photo album from a librarian’s trip to England for George VI’s coronation
lovely early 20^th century burlwood secretary
lemonade set with small glasses and pitcher
The guys who work there aren’t super polite and it has that weird musty old-​stuff smell. But it’s totally worth the drawbacks for the fun finds.

Incredibly rude owner ruined this place. Over the years, we stopped at Stephen’s when in Santa Fe, buying occassional art, furniture. Well not anymore! After leaving the Rancho de las Golondrinas Children’s Celebration at 4pm, we went to Stephen’s and arrived at about 4:20. We walked the entire store, found a rustic round dining table, a pine bedside table, and one other item. At 4:50pm, my husband asked the owner Gary to look at the round table with him. Gary immediately says he will take $ 400 instead of $ 465 for the table. We weren’t even asking for a lower price. My husband wanted to ask what kind of wood it was made out of, whether the two pieces (pedestal and top) would seperate etc. I asked if they run a truck to Albuquerque. Gary got huffy. It is too expensive. It costs $ 200 for an Albuquerque delivery. I said, «I was just asking. Some places do.» He went on. «I am not American Home Furniture. And the city has raised the minimum wage to $ 12/​hr.» I said, «No problem. It was just a question.» My husband asks him to see if he thinks the table will fit in our vehicle (a mini-​van). He seems frustrated. I offer to measure for it. We both go to the car. He is almost immediately saying no way. I say I think that it would fit diagonally. He says, you just need to get a truck and come back. I say, well we have one and could do that. We wanted to see if this would work first. He was negative, confrontational, and rude. So I tell him that I haven’t appreciated how rude he was being to us. He says that we shouldn’t have looked around for two hours and decided right before closing that we want to buy something. I say we haven’t been here two hours. He says, yes you have and I can look on my video camera and prove it to you. Um.OK. Crazy! I ask who the owner is and he says that he is the owner. I am shocked. He says he has an appointment at 5:10 and has to go. So at 5:03 we were leaving. I would have preferred that he tell us upfront that he was closing and couldn’t help us (even thought it was 4:50) than to have had the treatement we received. I will never step foot in the place again. It was embarassing in front of my children and there are too many other options.

This consignment gallery has been around a long time — long before Santa Fe was the place to go for southwestern style. My family used to buy and sell furniture and other «goodies» here for many years.
They have survived most of the tourist turmoil over the last 20 years because they have stuck to the premise of only accepting and selling quality, not quantity. They do not limit themselves to «southwestern, re: Santa Fe Style» items. They do limit their merchandise to gold standard, real wood and real quality. I doubt if you will find anything made out of pressed wood in this place.
The shop is large and full of wonderful furniture and other items that you won’t find anywhere else in Santa Fe. One-​of-​a-​kind. It is on the other end of the spectrum from Jackalope — where you are overwhelmed with thousands of colorful and inexpensive items. Both have their place, you just have to decide what you want your «place» to look like.
If you are looking to furnish a house or apartment in Santa Fe and you don’t want new and don’t want WalMart, Stephens is the place to go. You can create a wonderful eclectic lived-​in feeling with the help of Stephens in no time at all. .. and very little expense.