The Santa Fe look is not Southwestern. I’m thinking of setting my next book in Santa Fe. I was looking around today to refresh my visual memories of that extraordinarily beautiful place. I know part of it is a spiritual thing—and not a Godly spirit.  But I ran across these two brochures about the work of Ira and Sylvia Seret. I thought I’d share them, so you could see how the Santa Fe style differs so radically from the Southwestern stuff commonly seen outside of the area.

Feast your eyes on part of the Santa Fe look — it’s not southwestern

I know this is worldly stuff, but get beyond that into the beauty. The Lord loves beauty. You can see it in his creation no matter where you look. We’d always get harangued about the evil, heathen atmosphere in Santa Fe. It was easy to control. We went there to relax in the beauty—something that has been lost in the tail end of the gentile age, as we hasten toward judgement. Does the Lord care about beauty? I believe He does. Look at what He created. Our human efforts are pretty puny—even though our creativity is one of the ways we are created in God’s image.

The first is for The Inn of the Five Graces: a hotel they put together in the late 1990s. You need a large 4K screen to see it well, but take a look. Right-click to open the frame in a new tab, to see all of it.

The second is for their 70,000 sq. foot store down near the plaza and the capital building. Seret and Sons is amazing. Pat and I spent many hours just wandering and looking. If you click on the link to their store, you’ll see what a wealth of things are there, not really found elsewhere. Some of it’s a bit over the top. But one thing’s clear: The Santa Fe Look is Not Southwestern.