Rileystreet Art Supply is the North Bay's premier source for art supplies. Our Santa Rosa location has been voted the Best Art Supply Store in Sonoma County for the past 14 years.
Our San Rafael store has been voted the Best Art Supply Store in Marin County for the past 4 years and the store is only 5 years old. We were pretty upset we didn't get it the first year.
We have always carried the widest selection of artist materials in the North Bay, many of which are discounted from retail everyday. Many of our customers have said "your regular prices are the same as their sale prices".
We offer a fantastic art education schedule in both stores including free demos virtually every weekend. Plus all of our staff are practicing artists or have visual art degrees.
Our goal is simple - provide the best service and appropriate materials for every creative persons project, vision or idea.
We hope you give us a try.
Many people come into our store and ask "Why are you called Rileystreet?"
In 1968 a young gentleman by the name of Bill English and several other artisans founded Rileystreet. The store was an old carriage house, which sold consignment art and craft wares of the Sonoma County artistic community. At that time it was more of a local gathering place for local artists to come listen to musicians and socialize. Many people still frequent us today talking about those days at Rileystreet. Through the success of Rileystreet as a place to sell their works led to those same artists requesting that we carry the tools and materials that they used.
As the 70’s came along, consignment sales faded as the materials market boomed. That was the beginning of the "Rileystreet Annex". This was a second location that sold looms, yarn, macrame, leather , tools and traditional art materials. Soon the original Rileystreet Shop was closed so Rileystreet became solely dedicated to selling materials.
The 80’s brought new changes in the market. This was the decade in which many other long standing art material retailers would call the "hey days". Commercial artists and designers in the graphic arts became a significant part of our customer base. Yarns, looms and macrame’ were being replaced with rows of dry transfer lettering, technical pens and drafting furniture.
As Rileystreet went into the 90’s we found ourselves in the midst of another transformation. Computers had begun to take over the graphic and drafting arts. So we found ourselves putting our energy and focus back into our roots which was fine art materials and craft materials. And you remember that guy Bill who started all this, well, after working his tail off for many years he decided to take a trip to Mexico- that lasted 8 years!!!!
In 1997, Bill decided he still wanted to stay in Mexico so his daughter Jana, and son in law Mike, took over the business thus creating a second generation of this family runned business. The third may be on the way if their son or daughter become interested in the arts.
In 2000 came one more change and it was not a small one. Due to the dedicated support of our customers and our continued success we were able to open a second location in Sonoma, Ca.. Though this was a smaller location than in Santa Rosa there was a significant need for an art material source in such an artistic and cultural city.
As times changed we eventually sold our Sonoma store to our valued manager at the time. He and his wife currently run the store renamed as Fineline Art Supply.
Along came 2007 and Rileystreet envisioned themselves being in another region that seemed starved of art materials. So again, a second location was formed in Marin County. This store currently resides in the heart of San Rafael, California.
To sum this all up about who we are is simple. Rileystreet is a local family run business which values their customers dearly. Every one of us here loves to listen and share with other people about their ideas and visions.
We hope your next thing to do after reading this is to do something creative.
Oh, and one last thing, that old carriage house was on Riley Street in downtown Santa Rosa.
