35 Best Shopping in Rhode Island, USA

The adjoining 1661 Farm supplies wool from its alpacas, llamas, yaks, and sheep for North Light artisans to make beautiful yarns, clothing, and blankets. Classes are offered in knitting, crochet, and felting—and you can also tour the Micro Yarn Mill where the yarns are made.

Through a window in the gallery at Thames Glass, you can watch Matthew Buechner and his team making blown-glass gifts. Sign up for a lesson to make an ornament, paperweight, or vase out of molten glass.

This 30,000-square-foot shop specializes in distinctive architectural salvage such as mantels, doors, stained glass, fountains, and garden statuary including items plucked from places like the Belcourt mansion.

At this shop, Tamar Kern displays her signature stackable cone rings, plus unique designs by a dozen other contemporary artists.

This gallery, which traces its origins to 1870, exhibits original paintings and prints of landscapes and seascapes by Rhode Island artists, and sells a full range of art supplies and gifts for the creatively inclined. The nautical collection includes oil paintings of America's Cup winning yachts.

This public gallery at Providence's private Wheeler School exhibits works from Rhode Island's extensive population of local artists, including past and current attendees of the nearby Rhode Island School of Design. Attached to Wheeler's library, the gallery features winners from about a half-dozen juried art shows it sponsors annually, in a variety of media.

Expect the unusual at this 35-year-old shop, which sells jewelry, gadgets, clocks, and gifts handcrafted by more than 100 artists.

Etsy fans will be delighted by the handmade wares at this colorful shop and gallery: jewelry, notecards, prints, silk-screened T-shirts, fashion accessories, bags, Rhode Island-themed trinkets, and other sparkly handmade objects by local artists are all for sale. You'll save money on every purchase, too, because there's no sales tax on art in Rhode Island.

Paintings, photography, sculpture, ceramics, and works in other media by southern New England artists are this gallery's specialty.

This boutique shop has been a mainstay in Wickford Village since 1971, selling a wide variety of local crafts, stationary, glassware, pottery, and quirky gift items. It's a delight just to stroll around and admire the collection of unique and curious goods packing every shelf, and while you can spend hundreds on some one-of-a-kind items, the shop isn't so precious as to eschew a few $10 touristy trinkets, too.

Inside this shop, you'll find an extraordinary collection of art nouveau Zsolnay pottery from Hungary, as well as museum-quality lighting fixtures, antique glass, fine porcelain, and vintage Newport postcards from the 1890s through World War II.

With a hippie vibe, the kid- and couple–friendly Fantastic Umbrella Factory contains a handful of rustic shops built around a wild garden and bamboo forest. Unusual flowers, succulents, and other plants are for sale, along with interesting clothing and jewelry, CBD products, soy candles, creative pottery, Native American handcrafts, quirky gifts, and incense. For $3 you can buy a bag full of seeds to feed the fenced-in emus and roaming chickens. 

This small fine-art gallery represents local and nationally known artists, photographers, and jewelry designers. You'll find inspired landscapes and seascapes as well as a collection of vintage pottery.

Clothing, housewares, fair-trade handicrafts, and novelty items can all be found at this small curiosity shop and gift boutique, which stocks one of the best collections of Rhode Island-made goods in the state.

You can pick up handmade pendants, rings, earrings, and bracelets with maritime (and Block Island) themes at this jewelry store.

Drop by HomeStyle along increasingly gentrified Westminster Street for eye-catching objets d'art, stylish housewares, and other innovative, extraordinary, or whimsical decorative items.

Books about Block Island history are a specialty of this shop, which also has a good selection of fiction and nonfiction for rainy day or beach reading on vacation. There are also art supplies and classes for adults.

This gallery specializes in the work of local and regional artists: photographs, sculptures, ceramics, and contemporary American paintings, often with coastal themes. Works from more than 30 artists are on display at the gallery overlooking Old Harbor from the second floor of the Post Office building.

The owner of this collection of home accessories is an interior designer who blends old with new to colorful but harmonious effect.

Malcolm Greenaway has taken magnificent photographs of Block Island places and scenes since moving here in 1974. In his Water Street gallery, he sells prints in various sizes—print only, matted, or matted and framed. Come in and meet the artist himself: he's usually around when the shop is open.

You'll find a huge selection of maps, globes, and atlases at this shop. There's also a small treasure trove of early computer-generated maps.

Antiquers (and maybe yard-salers, too) could get lost for hours in this three-story shop that offers a collection of "curiosities, oddities, and treasures from another time" for sale. Fed by more than 200 dealers, the shelves here burst with every imaginable kind of antique items, including clothing, furniture, statuary, midcentury appliances, housewares, and vintage swag from local schools.

Macy's, Boscov's, and an Apple Store are among the anchor tenants at this large mall with 13 restaurants include the Cheesecake Factory and P. F. Chang's. Also here are Dave & Buster's and a 16-screen cinema and IMAX theater. Parking in the garage is free for the first two hours.

This shop associated with RISD's art museum has a selection of inspired toys, totes, gifts, and jewelry, plus accessories by Rhode Island School of Design students and alumni, including designer Andrea Valentini's sustainable-fabric bags.

This shop carries jewelry, crafts like handmade quilts and pillows, and gifts.

This Rhode Island artists' cooperative, a working studio gallery, changes its shows frequently. One wall is dedicated to its members, who are primarily painters. The gallery's name is a nod to its original location at the corner of Spring and Bull streets. The juried Fakes and Forgeries exhibit, now in its fourth decade, awards prizes for the best copies and reinterpretations of popular paintings.

The gallery, located in a renovated horse barn for nearly 40 years, exhibits paintings, photographs, pottery, and jewelry by island artists and artisans. The rustic gallery also serves as a community arts center, hosting artist openings, art classes, movie screenings, and lectures.