SANTA FE SHOPPING Santa Fe has changed from a provincial Southwestern arts hub into a destination of international repute for interior décor and furnishings. Be sure to stop by the Design Center (418 Cerrillos Rd.), a cluster of about a dozen antiques shops. Among them is the Claiborne Gallery (505/982-8019; also at 608 Canyon Rd.), which overflows with 16th- through 18th-century tables, bowls, vases, and chairs of southern European and Latin American origin. Across the corridor, the Gloria List Gallery (505/982-5622) sells Spanish colonial devotional artifacts such as carved Guatemalan Virgins and Peruvian resplandores (ornate sterling-silver halos) from the 1700's.
You can actually eat the religious art sold at Todos Santos (125 E. Palace Ave., No. 31; 505/982-3855), a lilliputian candy shop. The chocolate milagros and altarpieces coated with edible 23-karat gold or silver leaf seem too pretty to nibble on, but don't hesitate to devour the rose-caramel or lemon-verbena truffles.
Just off the downtown Plaza, the Rainbow Man (107 E. Palace Ave.; 505/982-8706) carries kachina dolls, tribal rugs and blankets, Day of the Dead figurines, Oaxacan folk art, and vintage images by Edward S. Curtis, the distinguished early-1900's photographer of Native Americans.
Set inside a Depression-era bodega that still has its original deli counter, Four & Twenty Blackbirds (620 Old Santa Fe Trail; 505/983-7676) is three rooms of cookbooks, gourmet goods, and culinary knickknacks. But it's the pies—gooseberry, chocolaty French silk, steak-and-kidney, just about any variety you can dream up—that have Santa Feans packing the shop every week (place your order by Wednesday; pick up your pie on Friday).
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