SANTA FE, N.M. – Pumas ready to pounce, a rabbit with the wings of an angel, and chickens in every conceivable color and size. Davis Mather Folk Art Gallery is nothing short of magical, a destination for serious collectors seeking treasures worthy of a museum, but also a place where tourists can pick up a Chilean good-luck charm in the form of a three-legged pig for the bargain price of $12.

Mr. Mather has been in the same hole-in-the-wall space off Santa Fe Plaza since 1979, but he has been a folk-art addict for even longer.

"Basically I was a conduit for Felipe Archuleta," he says of the late New Mexico eccentric whose carved wood animals now grace prestigious institutions such as the American Museum of Folk Art in New York City. "From 1975 to 1978, I planted myself in his front yard, tried to buy everything I could, and sold it out of my house," Mr. Mather says of the man he credits with "spawning this whole New Mexico animal-carving tradition."

By the time Mr. Mather opened his gallery, he had discovered younger talents such as Alonzo Jimenez, famous for starting the "howling coyote" phenomenon, and David Alvarez, best known for a distinctive coterie of black pigs with white spots.

Next came slithering wooden snakes by Richard "Jimbo" Davila, giving rise to yet another craze. Before long, Mr. Mather had branched out into folk sculpture from Mexico's Oaxaca Valley: the colorful woodcarvings of Manuel Jiménez and Jaime Santiago, one known for whimsical animals and scary sirenas (sirens), the other for wild-eyed dogs and bucktooth rabbits.

Things have changed a lot since Mr. Mather made his first trip to the region with his wife, Christine Mather, a former curator of Spanish colonial art who has written a number of books on indigenous cultures and Santa Fe style. There were only five carvers in the whole Oaxacan valley in the mid-1970s, he says. Now there are hundreds.

The Mathers conduct several guided tours each year to remote Oaxacan villages where folk art continues to thrive amid primitive living conditions, the homes likely to lack indoor plumbing or electricity. It's an opportunity to uncover new talent while revisiting old friends such as Josefina Aguilar, whose glitzy ceramic figures of "hoochie mamas" fly off the shelf in Santa Fe.

The distinctive Aguilar style has endeared her to Mr. Mather's clients, but he isn't averse to giving her suggestions, as a result of which comical caricatures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden now share space with "ladies in sunhats," meaning figures with animal heads atop women's bodies.

"Some of my favorite objects are these animal mariachis by Calixto Santiago Lopez, whom I found in the isolated town of La Union Tejalapan, an hour away from downtown Oaxaca," Mr. Mather says. "He's part of an extended family of woodcarvers who use the old coal-based aniline dyes rather than acrylics. It soaks into the wood so you get these very punchy colors of magenta, turquoise and lime green."

Most of Mr. Mather's clients are repeat visitors, he says, noting that some people stop by just to talk.

He's a walking encyclopedia. Ask him a question about one of the dozens of artists he represents and chances are he'll pull a book or museum catalog off a shelf or open a file drawer and hand you a printed sheet of information.

"The operative word here is fun. Nothing's pretentious or inaccessible," Mr. Mather says. "I'm not the best salesman in the world, but I'm lucky this stuff is so bright and cheerful."

E-mail jkutner@dallasnews.com

SANTA FE, N.M. – Canyon Road has its devotees and extraordinary art galleries. But here are two other downtown dealers worth a stop.

For a journey to pre-Republic Texas or a safari through Audubon prints, step into William R. Talbot Fine Art, Antique Maps & Prints. The two-room gallery could keep a map lover busy for hours.

Assorted original prints of Indian warriors and Old West forts make this a must-visit for Western-history buffs. Recently, gallery prices ranged from the low three figures to $125,000 for the rare 1851 "J. De Cordova's Map of the State of Texas."

129 W. San Francisco Ave., 505-982-1559; www.William Talbot.com

Just down the street lies really old history: items more than 100 million years old.

Dinosaurs & More sounds like a toy store, but it's really a museum masquerading as a gallery. You can find dinosaur bones, minerals and fossils to bring out the rockhound in anyone. Owner Charlie Snell collects many of the specimens on expeditions throughout the West and in China. He's as eager to display his finds as to sell them. Prices range from a few dollars to the thousands.

102 W. San Francisco St., No. 5, 505-988-3299; www.meteor itefossilgallery.com.

Larry Bleiberg

THE GALLERY

Davis Mather Folk Art Gallery, 141 Lincoln Ave. in Santa Fe, N.M., is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Contact: 505-983-1660.

TRIPS TO MEXICO

The gallery offers one-week trips to Oaxaca in October and March each year. They're limited to nine people. Space remains on the trip Oct. 16-23. Participants visit archaeological and colonial sites and go directly to homes and workshops of folk artists.