8 Best Places to Shop in Newport County and East Bay, Rhode Island

Through a window in the gallery at Thames Glass, you can watch artist Matthew Buechner and his team working the forge and 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.

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

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.

Serious collector or casual art lover, you'll be mesmerized by the luminous maritime paintings exhibited within the 1772 Stephen DuBois House. Works by contemporary masters are strongly represented. Don't leave without making a voyage downstairs to the Constellation Room, a gallery space paneled in solid oak and modeled after the USS Constellation.

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.