Shop by craft
Best of Boston; search or filter for all 15
Beacon Hill, Boston
Beacon Hill Chocolates on Charles Street assembles boxes of artisan chocolates sourced from makers around the world, presented in its decoupage hatboxes. It also serves house confections and hot chocolate at the shop.
Best for Curated artisan chocolate boxes
Boston
Boston sneaker and streetwear boutique entered through a faux convenience-store frontage, carrying footwear, apparel and accessories alongside frequent collaborative releases.
Best for Hidden store, streetwear
Greater Boston
Boston General Store is an independent purveyor of home and apothecary goods, from brushes and soaps to kitchen tools and grooming supplies chosen for craftsmanship and traditional making. It stocks small American and international makers from its shops in Brookline and Dedham.
Best for Home and apothecary goods
Downtown, Boston
The Brattle Book Shop dates its founding to 1825 in Boston's Cornhill section. The Gloss family has run it since 1949. It fills a three-story building at 9 West Street with more than 250,000 used, rare and out-of-print books, plus maps, prints and an outdoor lot of bargain carts. Proprietor Ken Gloss appraises for Harvard, Boston University and the FBI and appears on Antiques Roadshow.
Best for Antiquarian and used books
The Brattle Book Shop was founded in 1825 in the Cornhill section of Boston. It has belonged to the Gloss family since 1949. George Gloss and his son Kenneth built it into one of the larger antiquarian book shops in the country, and Ken Gloss remains the proprietor. The shop moved to West Street in 1969. George marked the move by riding through Boston in a horse-drawn covered wagon, handing out books and telling passers-by to go west. The shop still occupies the three-story building at 9 West Street in Downtown Boston. Two floors hold general used books and a third floor holds rare and antiquarian volumes, with an outside sale lot of bargain carts. The stock runs past 250,000 items, from books and maps to prints, postcards and ephemera on every subject. The rare book room keeps first editions and fine leather bindings. An experienced buyer is on hand during the day. The shop buys everything from single volumes to whole estates, by appointment. Ken Gloss is a past president of the New England chapter of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America. He appraises books and libraries for Harvard, Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern and the FBI, among others. He appears on Antiques Roadshow and lectures to library groups and historical societies across New England. The shop produces a podcast called the Brattlecast, and its staff post a find of the week from the shelves.
Boston / New York
Boston-rooted sneaker and streetwear retailer known for collaborative footwear releases, including its Lobster series, alongside contemporary apparel and accessories.
Best for Sneaker boutique, Lobster Dunk
Boston
The Padded Pak’r backpack — US Army roots, Antwerp design collabs and a lifetime warranty. Stocked at Galeries Lafayette in Paris.
Best for US Army roots, Antwerp design collabs and a lifetime warranty
Beacon Hill, Boston
Helen's Leather on Charles Street in Beacon Hill carries one of New England's largest selections of Western boots, alongside leather jackets, bags, belts and sandals. The family shop has fitted cowboy boots from established American bootmakers for decades.
Best for Western boots and leather goods
Greater Boston, South Shore
Hilliard's has made hand-dipped chocolates and candy in Massachusetts since the 1920s, among them butter crunch, creams and seasonal moulded pieces. The family confectioner produces its sweets in small batches and sells them from its South Shore shops.
Best for Hand-dipped chocolates and candy
Boston, USA
A running-apparel company founded May 3, 2012 by Washington University students David Spandorfer and Michael Burnstein, now based in Boston, donating a share of sales to clean-water nonprofits like Water.org and Living Water International.
Best for Running for clean water
Janji was founded on May 3, 2012, by David Spandorfer and Michael Burnstein while they were students at Washington University in St. Louis. The company's original name was Edele, but the founders dropped it after customers repeatedly mispronounced it or confused it with the singer Adele; they replaced it with Janji, the Malay word for 'promise.' The brand launched its first products, shirts and shorts designed around the flags of Haiti and Kenya, at a single running store, Big River Running in St. Louis, before growing into a standalone apparel company now based in Boston. Janji's core mechanism ties every purchase to water access: a share of proceeds from apparel sales funds clean-water projects run by partner nonprofits including Water.org, Living Water International, MSABI and DIGDEEP, in countries such as Haiti, Kenya, Peru, Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia. The apparel itself stays within performance running gear, shirts, shorts and related running kit, rather than expanding into general athletic wear, keeping the product line tied closely to the running-community customer base the brand was built for.
USA
Ministry of Supply is a Boston-founded (2012) apparel brand built by MIT-connected founders, applying NASA-derived phase-change material technology and other lab-tested fabrics to machine-washable suits, shirts and workwear.
Best for NASA-tech polos, performance; Apollo NASA polos; Hybrid performance polos; Velocity athletic polos
Ministry of Supply was founded in 2012 by Gihan Amarasiriwardena, Kevin Rustagi, Kit Hickey and Aman Advani, who met through MIT's Entrepreneurship Center in 2011. The brand's signature technology traces to phase-change materials (PCMs) originally investigated by NASA's Johnson Space Center for temperature regulation in spacesuit gloves; the founders licensed the same PCM technology from Outlast Technologies, the patent holder, and applied it to dress shirts designed to respond to body heat.
The company launched publicly via Kickstarter in 2012, raising roughly $429,000 against an original $30,000 goal, before opening a showroom in Boston and moving into online and retail sales.
USA
Boston athletic brand — a sneaker company with US manufacturing. Made in USA and UK lines. The 990, 992 and 550 are icons.
Best for N logo sport polos; Made in USA Sneakers; American-made running shoes
North End, Boston
Anthony Polcari, an Italian immigrant, opened this North End shop in 1932, and the family still blends its coffee and scoops spices from bins and glass jars. Three generations later, Polcari's carries over 150 spices alongside coffee, nuts and Italian dry goods.
Best for In-house coffee blends since 1932
Polcari's Coffee traces to a single immigrant's arrival: Anthony Polcari, who came from Italy and opened the shop on Salem Street in 1932. His wife Rose and their children worked the counter alongside him, and the business passed down through the family — his son Ralph eventually took over operations, and today the shop is run by a proprietor named Bobby, described by regulars as someone who "makes you feel welcome" in the same spirit the shop has kept for over ninety years.
The North End location still scoops coffee, dried beans, nuts, spices and Italian dry goods from bins and glass jars rather than pre-packaged shelves, a presentation that has become as much a part of the shop's identity as what's actually in the jars. The inventory runs deep — well over 150 different spices, legumes, flour, grains, rice and extracts — alongside deli items, pasta and candy, making Polcari's less a coffee shop with extras than a full old-world pantry that happens to blend its own coffee in-house.
Open limited weekday and Saturday hours and closed Sundays, the shop has resisted the instinct to modernize its format even as the neighborhood around it has changed, keeping the bins-and-jars presentation that three generations of the Polcari family built the business on.
SoWa, Boston
Stitch and Tickle sells handmade leather bags designed by Sophie Truong, established in 2011, alongside linen clothing, ceramics, jewelry, and home textiles from its SoWa studio-store at 63 Thayer Street in Boston, which opened in May 2019. Products include hobo, crossbody, and shearling cross-body bags.
Best for Handmade leather bags and home goods
Faneuil Hall, Boston
The Leather Shop at Faneuil Hall has designed and crafted high-end leather handbags, briefcases, belts, backpacks, duffel bags, and wallets since 1979 at 1 Faneuil Hall Square in Boston. It offers free initials and company logo embossing on its leather goods.
Best for Custom embossed leather bags and accessories
USA
Tracksmith is Boston’s amateur spirit — Bislett shorts and van-support romance for the committed runner.
Best for Bislett Norwegian polos
Neighbourhood walks
Area names come from each shop’s published address record; ORBIS does not invent neighbourhoods.
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗