Where To Go on a Stationery Journey in Seattle

You can get great paper products at many art stores and gift shops around the city, but for this list I’m focusing on places that specialize in stationery.

Kinokuniya

📚 I feel like everyone would get mad at me if this bookstore inside Uwajimaya wasn’t on this list. Kinokuniya is mostly a place to buy manga (in Japanese and English) along with manga-related merch, but if you head upstairs, you’ll find a cornucopia of pens and notebooks. When you’ve read so much manga you want to draw your own, this is where you go.

Know before you go: You can get up to two hours of parking in the Uwajimaya lot provided you spend at least $20 at Uwajimaya, Kinokuniya, or another Uwajimaya Village merchant. Alternatively, the light rail is right next door.

Grapheme

✒️ This Central District space serves as a printmaking studio for owner Mandolin Brassaw. But it also sells a curated selection of notebooks, pens, scissors, and stamps. It feels like a temple devoted to the arts and crafts of a previous age.

Know before you go: This weekend (Friday to Sunday), Grapheme is hosting an event for the Kaweco DIY Sport, a fountain pen that you can’t buy online but instead assemble yourself at participating stationery stores. It’s walk-in only, but you can let the shop know you’re coming by RSVPing here.

Lucca Great Finds

🐦‍⬛ Lucca is one of a half-dozen shops along Ballard Avenue that defy categorization and just sell cool stuff. Lucca’s cool stuff is sort of woodland creature-coded, by which I mean that if we lived in a children’s book where all the people were bunnies, mice, etc., the most stylish mice would shop here. The back room is where you’ll find Lucca’s line of greeting cards alongside a ton of paper products and pencils, the ideal place to find a gift for the bookish mouse in your life.

Know before you go: You can buy Lucca’s cards online, but everything else has to be purchased in-person. This is the kind of place where you want to go there yourself anyway.

MochiThings

😸 This small shop near Pike Place Market is “all about the cute and functional.” Beyond paper and pens, it sells a ton of pouches, containers, and photo albums — anyone who loves organizational projects, this is your jam.

Know before you go: MochiThings gives away a little paper fan to every customer, and if you spend more than $50 right now, you’ll get a free planner (while supplies last).