Best Art-Supply Store

Old school is the way Sidney Kaufman describes his one-of-a-kind arts emporium. Indeed this spacious shop is frozen in time. At the 24-year-old Palette, you can find graphic-arts supplies that haven't been available in most stores since the dawn of the computer age. Transfer type, which was used to do layout before the advent of Quark, can be purchased here. But it won't be around for long. Manufacturers have stopped making it, complains Kaufman, who has been in the business 55 years. The Palette also offers stuff to get you started on blast-from-the-past art forms like screen printing, block printing, calligraphy, and bumper-sticker making. Of course there timeless oil paints are available in every hue imaginable. Watercolors and acrylics abound. And there are fiber-tip pens, charcoal, drafting gear, easels, china markers, artists' pencils, and recycled artist paper. Art students even get discounts at the Palette. "We try to look out for them," says Kaufman with a sympathetic smile.