Who We Are

Desert Bird Mercantile is a family-owned business from Corrales, New Mexico where we create items for your home including clean, modern wood furnishings, vibrant textiles and whimsical illustrations. We believe in surrounding yourself with items that are useful and beautiful – focusing on quality over quantity. We have a retail store in Albuquerque’s historic Old Town Patio Market where we feature our designs as well as things from other New Mexico artisans. We are also happy to discuss custom projects. Because we are two people, not a factory, and online store is tricky. We build in small batches but don’t tend to make things the exact same way between batches – so the listings get tricky. It’s fun when people simply Contact Us to tell us what they are looking for and we have a conversation about what we have in stock.

Neal Wenderlich
Woodworker / Co-Owner

Tammy Wenderlich
Textile Artist and Co-Owner

Jennifer Winkless-Hall
Marketing Director

Who We Are

How We Create

Wood Furniture and Accessories by Neal Wenderlich

My wood-based home furnishings are 100% designed and built in Corrales, NM.  My designs are clean and modern featuring domestic hardwoods such as maple, cherry and walnut – with a few exotics for accent color.  I rarely stain or paint the wood; I prefer to feature the natural color and figure of the wood in our designs. Click here for a gallery of my projects.

I love working on commissions and bespoke furnishings.  Send me an email and tell me your needs.  I will create drawings that we can use to work through the design details and help you select materials.  Once we agree on a design, price and schedule, I will invoice half the project up front and the remainder upon delivery.

Artist-Designed Textiles by Tammy Wenderlich

My art typically starts out as combination of nature-themed sketches and doodles and vibrant abstract art prints that I create using a gelatin plate, stencils and stamps.  Messy work such as painting, fabric dying and screen printing all happens in my Corrales art studio.  Click here to view some of my work in my textile and illustration gallery.  My sewing studio is located within our retail store and, if it’s my day to mind the store, that is where you will probably find me.  All of my textiles are intended to be machine washable which means sturdy construction as well as high quality inks and textile paints.

Retail Store and Studios

We now have 2 locations!  Our larger retail store and sewing studio is located in Albuquerque’s historic Old Town Patio Market.

Our 2nd location is located in our home town of Corrales, NM and features Neal's furniture gallery, gift items and a the Fabric Nest (mini fabric store).

Retail Store Partnerships

We have established partnerships to offer home decor items by local artists and artisans in our Old Town Albuquerque retail store.  If you are interested in partnering with us, please email us with a description of what you make including some photos. General guidelines: 1) We prefer New Mexico artists 2) Your products should fit the style of our store: home decor, vibrant, New Mexican, etc.  (review photos on this website to get the general idea) 3) Your products should be of high quality including packaging 4) You must be willing to help with promotion including social media and emails.  Keep in mind that our store is small, we only take a few partners at a time and it really has to be an obvious fit.

Wholesale

We do occasionally wholesale our products to other stores.  As with the Retail Partnerships (above), there has to be a logical fit.  If you are interested, contact us to discuss.