Art Supply Store Near Me in Bloomsbury: L. Cornelissen & Son

Artists searching for an art supply store near me in central London inevitably find their way to 105 Great Russell Street, where L. Cornelissen & Son has occupied a corner opposite the British Museum since 1855. Step through the entrance and you leave the roar of Bloomsbury traffic behind, entering an interior lined with floor-to-ceiling Victorian mahogany cabinets, brass apothecary scales, and glass jars brimming with vivid powdered pigments. The shop was founded by Louis Cornelissen, a Belgian lithographer who settled in London after political unrest in Brussels, and it remains one of the world's premier destinations for traditional artists' materials. The shop survived nineteenth-century economic depressions, the London Blitz of the Second World War, and the modern shift toward synthetic mass-market art supplies, preserving its original architectural character and trade standards intact.

The defining glory of Cornelissen is its expansive library of dry powdered pigments, arranged systematically in glass specimen jars behind polished counter rails. Here you can buy genuine lapis lazuli, malachite, cinnabar, dragon's blood resin, and French ultramarine, weighed out by hand on traditional pan balances with brass weights. A 50g glass jar of French Ultramarine dry pigment costs £8.50, offering rich tinting strength and brilliant transparency for custom oil, egg tempera, or acrylic formulation. The shop sources its minerals from ethical quarries and heritage pigment mills across France, Germany, and Italy, ensuring unadulterated purity without chalk fillers.

For watercolorists and manuscript illuminators, the shop stocks genuine gum arabic tears from Kordofan alongside ready-mixed liquid binders. A 100ml bottle of Cornelissen artists' gum arabic liquid medium sells for £9.95, giving water-soluble paints a luminous gloss, enhanced flow, and flexible handling on heavy rag paper. If you require traditional ink for pen and wash work, a 30ml bottle of Cornelissen Chinese vermilion drawing ink is priced at £7.20, flowing cleanly from steel dip pens and bamboo quills onto hot-pressed cotton paper without feathering.

The mineral collection also includes rare earth oxides, bone blacks, raw umbers from Cyprus, and genuine cochineal lake derived from traditional carmine extractions. Because pure pigments behave differently depending on the refractive index of your chosen binder, the staff provide guidance on oil absorption values and vehicle compatibility, preventing common studio defects like cracking, wrinkling, or chalking in thick impasto passages. Many artists maintain personal recipe notebooks filled with Cornelissen formulation notes gathered over successive studio visits.

Beyond dry colorants, Cornelissen maintains an exceptional cabinet of artist brushes crafted to exacting European standards. Their Series 101 Kolinsky red sable pointed round watercolour brush size 4 costs £16.50, featuring a needle-sharp point, full belly, and superior spring that holds generous washes of color without splaying across textured sheets. Oil painters can select unbleached Chungking hog bristle flats and filberts that withstand heavy solvent use and retain their crisp chisel edges through months of studio sessions.

Studio accessories reflect centuries of European workshop tradition rather than disposable mass production. A hand-carved porcelain colour palette with 12 slant wells costs £22.00, providing an inert, stain-resistant mixing surface that cleans effortlessly under running warm water. You will also find ox gall wetting agents, refined walnut oil, cold-pressed linseed oils, rabbit skin glue crystals, genuine Italian gilder's red bole, and glass mulling stones neatly arranged across the counter drawers for painters who grind their own colours by hand.

Paper drawers in the back room store heavyweight handmade watercolor sheets from Saint Armand, Arches, and Fabriano, featuring deckled edges and natural gelatin sizing. The staff carefully wrap individual sheets in archival tissue before rolling them in protective cardboard tubes, ensuring pristine delivery for calligraphers, botanical illustrators, and fine printmakers traveling across London or heading overseas.

Working with raw pigments offers contemporary artists complete control over the physical texture, opacity, and chromatic vibrancy of their palette. Unlike industrial tubed paints that often contain barium sulfate, aluminum hydrate, or wax stabilizers to prolong shelf life, home-ground paints reflect the pure, uninhibited interaction between ground stone and drying oil. At Cornelissen, customers can purchase frosted glass mulling slabs and matching pestle mullers to grind pigment paste into smooth, buttery paint right in their own studios.

The shop also caters to master calligraphers, mapmakers, and printmakers seeking historical accuracy for heritage commissions. Traditional goose feather quills, hand-cut reed pens, and German steel nibs sit alongside French shell gold dishes and silverpoint styluses. This commitment to rare studio tools makes the shop an essential pilgrimage for artists who view material craft as an integral dimension of their conceptual work. Walking away with a bespoke glass vial of vermilion and a hand-tied squirrel brush connects modern creative practice directly to the Old Masters.

Cornelissen is situated at 105 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3RY. The shop opens Monday to Saturday from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm, and remains closed on Sundays. Tottenham Court Road station, served by the Central, Northern, and Elizabeth lines, is a four-minute walk away, while Holborn station on the Piccadilly and Central lines is equally convenient for visitors arriving from north or west London.

Because many raw pigments and specialized mediums require thoughtful consideration, plan to spend at least forty-five minutes browsing the wooden drawers and speaking with the team. Combining your visit with an afternoon study session inside the print and drawing study rooms of the nearby British Museum provides an inspiring day of historical art research in the heart of Bloomsbury. Keep your parcels dry in a sturdy tote bag, as the delicate glass apothecary jars deserve gentle transit back to your studio easel.