Great American Illustrators shop in Stonington, CT

If you're an illustrator or collector of illustrations who is in the Mystic, CT area any time soon I recommend that you take a quick trip 4 miles down the road to Stonington, CT, and spend an hour perusing the excellent antique and collectible prints by famous (and not so famous) illustrators from America's past available at a lovely small shop called Great American Illustrators. These include the biggies like Rockwell, Pyle, Leyendecker, Parrish, Wyeth, Wilcox-Smith, etc., but also those unsung heroes of the everyday magazines of the past century.

And when I say prints I don't mean reproductions of paintings, I mean the actual magazine cover from 1933 with the Leyendecker image on it. The covers or pages are individually displayed with clear archival bags and backing boards, and needless to say I now have a stack of them in the studio for inspiration!


The shop has other ephemera such as art memorabilia, maps, sheet music, civil war engravings and such. For an illustrator it was wonderful to see the images as they had been printed, and not just second or third generation reproductions in books. Of course I have also read the words of some of these same illustrators complaining about the quality of the prints when they appeared in the magazines, but that is something we are all too familiar with even today!

Their hours are listed on their temporary website (see the link above). And luckily Stonington has a nice public beach, restaurants and shops for entertaining others in your party who might not be quite so enthralled with the illustrators of yesteryear!

Click here to view a map of the location.