Seven historic artist-supply shops and color houses in London, Copenhagen, Rome, and Paris that have served generations of painters, makers, and craftspeople.

Before color came in standardized tubes and charts, artists relied on specialist merchants who mixed pigments, prepared binders, and understood materials intimately. A handful of these historic shops remain today, carrying forward traditions that span decades—and, in some cases, centuries.

From a pastel maker established in Paris in 1720 to London's pigment-filled Cornelissen, these are eight enduring destinations where color, craft, and material knowledge still matter.

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01. La Maison du Pastel

Paris, France · Founded 1720

Address: 20 Rue Rambuteau, 75003 Paris, France

Known for: Handmade soft pastels

The world’s oldest pastel manufacturer, producing exceptionally luminous colors entirely by hand. Its hidden courtyard boutique holds thousands of shades created through a tradition carried forward for more than three centuries.

More than simply an artist-supply shop, La Maison du Pastel represents the survival of a highly specialized craft. Its extraordinary spectrum of color is a reminder that before industrial production made pigments universally reproducible, subtle variations in texture, density, and tone were part of the character of an artist’s materials.

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02. Ditta G. Poggi

Rome, Italy · Founded 1825

Address: Via del Gesù 74/75, 00186 Rome

Known for: Pigments, brushes and traditional artist materials

Founded near the Pantheon to serve Rome’s painters, fresco artists, and portraitists. Nearly two centuries later, its historic shop remains filled with paints, pigments, brushes, canvases, and specialist materials.

Its location in Rome places the shop within a city shaped by centuries of painting, decorative arts, architecture, and restoration. Ditta G. Poggi continues the tradition of the neighborhood artist merchant: a place where professional materials coexist with the physical history of the city around them.

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03. Charvin Arts

Paris, France · Founded 1830

Address: 57 Quai des Grands Augustins, 75006 Paris

Known for: Richly pigmented oil colors and traditional varnishes

A historic French color house known for richly pigmented oil paints and traditional varnishes. Its Paris boutique carries hundreds of shades rooted in formulas once supplied to artists including Cézanne and Bonnard.

Charvin’s walls of color capture something increasingly unusual in contemporary retail: abundance within specialization. Hundreds of closely related hues reveal just how much variation can exist within what might otherwise be described simply as red, blue, green, or yellow.

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04. L. Cornelissen & Son

London, England · Founded 1855

Address: 105 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3RY

Known for: Dry pigments, gilding and specialist materials

A historic London color shop lined with wooden drawers, glass jars, brushes, and powdered pigments, remains a treasured destination for artists and conservators seeking traditional paints, gilding materials, and rare colors.

With its dark green storefront and interior filled with jars, drawers, pigments, and specialist tools, Cornelissen feels as much like an archive of materials as a shop. Its continuing appeal lies not only in what can be purchased there, but in the accumulated knowledge represented by the objects on its shelves.

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05. Stelling

Copenhagen, Denmark · Founded 1860

Address: Amagertorv 9, 1st Floor, 1160 Copenhagen

Known for: Professional painting and drawing materials

A historic Copenhagen artists’ shop dating to a time when pigments and binders were mixed for customers inside the store. Today, its central-city shops remain devoted to professional paints, brushes, canvases, and drawing materials.

Stelling reflects the evolution of the traditional artist merchant into the modern professional art store while maintaining a connection to its origins. What once required pigments and binders to be prepared by hand can now be found across a vast spectrum of ready-made materials, yet the shop’s purpose remains remarkably consistent.

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06. Sennelier

Paris, France · Founded 1887

Address: 3 Quai Voltaire, 75007 Paris

Known for: Oil pastels, paints and fine-art materials

Opened opposite the Louvre in 1887, Sennelier became a landmark for generations of artists. In 1949, it created its celebrated oil pastel for Pablo Picasso, designed to work across surfaces without fading or cracking.

Few relationships illustrate the dialogue between artist and material-maker as clearly. A request for a different kind of medium eventually became an art material used around the world. Sennelier remains a reminder that some of the most familiar creative tools began not as mass-market products, but as solutions developed through conversations between makers and artists.

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07. Green & Stone

London, England · Founded 1927

Address: 251–253 Fulham Road, London SW3 6HY

Known for: Fine-art materials and traditional framing

A beloved Chelsea institution known for its carefully chosen artist materials, traditional framing, and cabinets filled with paints, pastels, brushes, and papers. It has remained a destination for London artists for nearly a century.

Green & Stone belongs to a particular tradition of specialist London shops in which the experience of browsing is inseparable from the objects themselves. Materials are presented not simply as supplies but as things worth looking at, touching, comparing, and keeping.

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08. Rougier & Plé

Paris, France · Founded 1854

Address: 15 Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire, 75003 Paris

Known for: Fine-art, paper and creative materials

A Parisian art-materials house that has supplied artists and craftspeople for more than 170 years. Its historic Marais store extends across four floors, filled with paints, papers, pigments, brushes, and creative tools.

Rougier & Plé represents a slightly different chapter in the history of the artist-supply shop: not solely a specialist color house, but an expansive destination for creative materials of almost every kind. Its longevity reflects the changing practice of art-making itself, as traditional pigments and brushes have come to sit alongside an ever-wider range of papers, graphic materials, markers, inks, and contemporary tools.

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The Enduring Artist’s Shop

These shops have lasted because they offer more than materials. They preserve a way of encountering color through touch, texture, and subtle variation — qualities that cannot quite be replicated on a screen.

From pigment-filled drawers to rows of pastels and brushes, each remains a place where the act of making begins with choosing well.

More than shops, they are living archives of color and craft.

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