The two shops worth crossing London for are five minutes apart. L. Cornelissen & Son at 105 Great Russell Street, opposite the British Museum, has been selling pigment since 1855 and still has its original Victorian fittings; Cass Art at 13 Charing Cross Road is the general art shop, open seven days a week, and the best-stocked in central London.
Britain has an odd relationship with this kind of shop. Paper, pens and paint are cheap and universal, so most visitors never think to buy them — and then find that the sketchbook, the ink or the fountain pen is the souvenir they actually use when they get home. It is light, it survives hand luggage, and nothing in it is breakable.
What follows is a short list of shops that know what they sell, with the days and hours read on each shop's own pages on 28 September 2026, and the two addresses that have changed since most guides were written. For the design end of the same instinct, our guide to Liberty covers its haberdashery and fabric floors, and London's department stores the stationery halls.
Where to go, and when they open
- L. Cornelissen & Son
- 105 Great Russell Street WC1B 3RY. Monday to Saturday 09:30–18:00. Established 1855
- Cass Art Charing Cross
- 13 Charing Cross Road WC2H 0EP. Monday to Saturday 10:00–19:00; Sunday 11:00–18:00
- Choosing Keeping
- 21 Tower Street WC2H 9NS. Monday to Saturday 10:00–18:30; Sunday 11:30–17:30
- Present & Correct
- 12 Bury Place WC1A 2JL. Monday to Saturday 11:00–18:00
- Shepherds (bookbinding and fine paper)
- 30 Gillingham Street SW1V 1HU. Monday to Friday 10:00–18:00; Saturday 10:00–17:00. Closed Sundays and bank holidays
- Atlantis Art Materials (trade counter)
- Unit 6, Bayford Street Industrial Centre, London E8 3SE, in Hackney — not Shoreditch
L. Cornelissen & Son: the oldest of them, and the one to see even if you buy nothing
Cornelissen has been trading since 1855 and says on its own site that the shop keeps its original Victorian fittings: dark wood, glass-fronted drawers and rows of stoppered jars of dry pigment. Its published departments run from pigments, gums and resins through oils, acrylics, watercolour and pastels to drawing, calligraphy, gilding and restoration, including its own historical ink range, a range by a maker called London Pigment, and edible gold leaf. Conservators shop here as well as students.
The building is protected. Historic England lists 103, 104 and 105 Great Russell Street together at Grade II under list entry 1330381, added to the list on 4 January 1972. The list describes three terraced houses, late seventeenth-century in origin with nineteenth-century fronts, and singles out number 105 for its early nineteenth-century wooden shopfront, with pilasters carrying an entablature, an egg-and-dart cornice and a slightly projecting shop window. That is the frontage you are looking at, and it is the reason the shop looks nothing like a modern retail unit.
Practically: Monday to Saturday, 09:30 to 18:00, and closed on Sunday. It is a minute from the British Museum's front gates, so it fits into a Bloomsbury morning without a detour. Dry pigment is the thing to buy if you paint, because it is sold by weight, weighs almost nothing and is genuinely hard to find at home. Our guides to Bloomsbury and the British Museum cover the streets around it.
Ask before you photograph the pigment wall. It is a working shop with restorers at the counter, not a museum display, and the staff are answering technical questions while you are pointing a phone at the jars. Buy a small pot of something and the conversation goes differently.
Cass Art, and the branch that has quietly disappeared
Cass Art is the chain, and for once that is not a criticism: the range is deep, the prices are competitive and the staff know the materials. The Charing Cross Road shop opens Monday to Saturday 10:00 to 19:00 and Sunday 11:00 to 18:00, which makes it the only serious art shop in central London you can use on a Sunday afternoon.
Its own page is charmingly inconsistent about its age. One paragraph says the shop has been serving artists for over 115 years; the store manager, quoted a few lines below, says over 130. Both appear on the same page, so take it as "well over a century" and leave it there. What is stated plainly is that it was the first store the company's founder acquired, in 1984, and that the shop is wheelchair accessible. The shop also claims T. E. Lawrence as an early customer for ink, which is its story rather than ours.
| Cass Art in London | Address | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Charing Cross | 13 Charing Cross Road WC2H 0EP | The deepest range, and the only Sunday option in the centre |
| Soho | 49 Brewer Street W1F 9UG | A quick top-up between Soho and Piccadilly |
| King's Cross | 14/15 Stable Street N1C 4AB | Convenient off a Eurostar or a northbound train |
| Kensington | 220 Kensington High Street W8 7RG | Combining with the South Kensington museums |
| Hampstead | 58–62 Heath Street NW3 1EN | A walk on the Heath afterwards |
Note what is not on that list. The Islington shop on Upper Street, which appears in a great many guidebooks and blog posts as the company's flagship, does not appear among the company's London stores in September 2026. If you have it written down, cross it out. The King's Cross branch, ten minutes' walk south, is the nearest replacement; see King's Cross.
Stationery, which is a separate hobby
Two small shops in the same square mile do stationery properly, and neither of them sells art materials.
Choosing Keeping at 21 Tower Street, in the lanes between Covent Garden and Seven Dials, is the one to visit first: pens, inks, notebooks, wax seals, pencils and paper from small makers, laid out like a cabinet of curiosities rather than a shelf of packets. It is open Monday to Saturday 10:00 to 18:30 and, unusually for this kind of shop, on Sunday from 11:30 to 17:30. Covent Garden and Leicester Square are the nearest stations, and our guide to shopping in Covent Garden and Seven Dials covers the streets it sits in.
Present & Correct at 12 Bury Place, a few doors from Cornelissen's end of Bloomsbury, is smaller, quieter and more graphic: filing supplies, cards, tags, tape, desk calendars, prints and a department the shop simply labels ephemera, much of it looking as though it came out of a 1950s office because a good deal of it did. Monday to Saturday, 11am to 6pm. Tottenham Court Road and Holborn are the nearest stations.
If you are looking for the British words for any of this, our guide to British words and slang for visitors will save you a confusing exchange: in a British stationer a rubber is an eraser, a biro is any ballpoint pen, and a pencil case is a pencil case rather than a pouch.
Paper, bookbinding and the shop that moved to Victoria
Shepherds, the bookbinders and fine-paper merchants, is the specialist for marbled and decorated paper, bookcloth, leather and binding tools. Its London shop is at 30 Gillingham Street SW1V 1HU, a few minutes behind Victoria station, and opens Monday to Friday 10:00 to 18:00 and Saturday 10:00 to 17:00, closed on Sundays and bank holidays.
One thing to know before you search for it. The business has changed its web address twice over: the old bookbinding.co.uk page now carries a notice directing visitors to a new site, and the older shepherds.co.uk address returns a server error. If you have an address for this shop from a guidebook rather than from the notice on that page, check it.
Two addresses in this trade have moved, and one name has changed. Atlantis Art Materials, often described as a Shoreditch or Brick Lane trade counter, is now at Unit 6, Bayford Street Industrial Centre, E8 3SE in Hackney. And the London Graphic Centre's old web address now redirects to a site trading as London Graphics, which was behind a security challenge when we tried it, so we could not read its current address or hours. Check both before you travel.
The trade counters, and whether a visitor should bother
Away from the West End there are two large suppliers that serve working artists rather than passing shoppers. Atlantis is in an industrial unit off Mare Street in Hackney; Jackson's Art Supplies operates from 1 Farleigh Place, London N16 7SX, in Stoke Newington, with telephone lines open Monday to Friday 9am to 5:30pm.
Be clear about what these are. Their advantage is bulk, price and canvas by the roll, and neither publishes the sort of high-street opening hours that tell a visitor to turn up. Unless you are buying stretchers or a large quantity of paint, and you have a way of getting it home, the West End shops are the better use of your afternoon. If you are in the area anyway, Hackney and London Fields and Dalston and Stoke Newington both have plenty else to do.
What is worth carrying home, and what is not
Prices in these shops are marked and not negotiable, and everything already includes VAT at 20%. There is no tax-free shopping for visitors on the British high street. Our estimate of the useful bands, in September 2026, since none of these shops publishes a general price list:
- Worth it: a hardbound sketchbook, a pot of dry pigment, a bottle of ink, a set of pencils, decorated paper by the sheet, a wax seal. All flat or small, none of it fragile, and most of it cheaper here than in a specialist shop at home.
- Think twice: anything liquid over 100 ml, which cannot go in hand luggage; large canvases and stretcher bars, which no airline will thank you for; and aerosols and solvents, which are restricted or banned outright.
- Skip: gift sets assembled for the tourist trade. The same brands are sold loose two shelves away for less.
For printed matter rather than blank paper, the second-hand and specialist bookshops a few streets away are the better hunting ground: see the best bookshops in London and Cecil Court and London's book streets. For models, paints and hobby kits rather than fine art, our guide to comic, game and hobby shops has the addresses.
A walking route that takes in four shops in ninety minutes
Start at Cornelissen on Great Russell Street when it opens at 09:30, before the museum crowd arrives. Walk two minutes to Present & Correct on Bury Place, which opens at eleven, so reverse the order if you are early. From there it is about ten minutes south-west through Bloomsbury and across New Oxford Street to Tower Street for Choosing Keeping, and another five minutes to Charing Cross Road for Cass Art. Four shops, no fares, and everything you bought will fit in one bag.
On a Sunday the route collapses to two: Choosing Keeping from 11:30 and Cass Art from 11:00. Cornelissen, Present & Correct and Shepherds are all closed. Our guide to opening hours and Sunday trading explains why small independent shops are freer to choose their Sunday hours than the big stores are.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the best art shop in London?
Cass Art on Charing Cross Road for range and convenience, open seven days a week, and L. Cornelissen & Son on Great Russell Street for pigment, gilding materials and specialist supplies. They are about five minutes' walk apart and answer different questions.
Is L. Cornelissen & Son still open?
Yes. It trades Monday to Saturday from 09:30 to 18:00 at 105 Great Russell Street WC1B 3RY, opposite the British Museum, and is closed on Sundays. The shop dates from 1855 and the building is listed at Grade II.
Where can I buy nice stationery in London?
Choosing Keeping at 21 Tower Street, near Seven Dials, for pens, inks and notebooks, open seven days; and Present & Correct at 12 Bury Place in Bloomsbury, Monday to Saturday 11am to 6pm, for graphic and office ephemera. For bookbinding materials and decorated paper, Shepherds at 30 Gillingham Street near Victoria.
Can I take art materials home in hand luggage?
Dry materials — pencils, pigment, paper, sketchbooks — travel without difficulty. Liquids over 100 ml must go in checked baggage, and aerosols, solvents and some varnishes are restricted or prohibited altogether. Check with your airline before buying anything wet or pressurised.
Has the Cass Art Islington shop closed?
It is not listed among the company's London stores as of September 2026, although it appears in many older guides as the flagship. The five London branches currently listed are Charing Cross, Soho, King's Cross, Kensington and Hampstead.
Sources
- Historic England - 103, 104 and 105 Great Russell Street, list entry 1330381 (checked September 2026)
- Historic England - National Heritage List for England, open data service (checked September 2026)
- GOV.UK - Tax-free shopping (checked September 2026)
- GOV.UK - Hand luggage restrictions at UK airports (checked September 2026)