After 42 years in business, Stephen’s A Consignment Gallery is packed with antique china cabinets, mid-century modern credenzas, gleaming silver tea services, crystal decanters, a former governor’s watch collection and someone’s late grandmother’s opera-length pearls.
About a year ago, the Cerrillos Road shop also accepted for consignment a massive private collection of ethnographic art and artifacts containing hundreds of pieces believed by some to date back more than 3,000 years.
Advertised on the store’s social media as “the largest private ethnographic art collection in the country,” the collection includes ceremonial stone axes from the Taino people of the Caribbean; carved wood, bone, coral and stone figures; and bowls and tools labeled as being from the “Marquesas Islands” or being “pre-Columbian.”
Pieces from the private collection of Al Luckett and Christine McCarthy on sale at Stephen’s A Consignment Gallery on Friday. The couple’s son says objects from the collection have been sold for “cents on the dollar of what their true value is,” but the gallery says it brought in experts on ethnographic art to help price objects and it’s been difficult to prove their “provenance.”
Domenic Etre, co-owner of Stephen’s A Consignment Gallery in Santa Fe, displays pieces from collection of Al Luckett and Christine McCarthy. Stephen’s is agreeing to sell the items on consignment to help Kay Coughlin, a longtime friend and customer.
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