10 stores · curated ORBIS register
Praça da Liberdade, Belo Horizonte
O Ateliê de Cerâmica is a collaborative ceramic studio of three artists in a historic house on the protected Praça da Liberdade urban ensemble in Belo Horizonte. The house operates as an independent gallery, putting ceramic work in dialogue with everyday life. Flávia Soares's book Corpo-Pote is among the works associated with the studio.
Best for Craft
Leblon
Rio bookstore opened 1979 by Dalva Gasparian on Rua Dias Ferreira in Leblon, a year after her Argumento launched in São Paulo. Known for stocking books banned under Brazil's military dictatorship; still family-run with an attached café.
Best for Brazilian literature and Leblon book browsing
Livraria Argumento was founded in São Paulo in 1978 by Dalva Gasparian, who started the bookstore partly because of the difficulty her husband, the businessman and publisher Fernando Gasparian, faced distributing books from the family's own publishing house, Paz e Terra, under Brazil's military dictatorship. The following year, in 1979, she opened a Rio de Janeiro branch, choosing Rua Dias Ferreira in Leblon, near her own home, for a small shop of just over 60 square meters.
During the years of heaviest censorship under the dictatorship (1964-1985), Argumento became known as one of the few bookstores in Rio still carrying titles considered subversive or banned, drawing students, journalists, writers and academics who could find little else, and turning the shop into an informal meeting point for a generation of Brazilian intellectuals.
In 1993 the store expanded into a new space on the same street, adding CDs and DVDs to its stock and opening an attached café, Café Severino, which remains part of the shop today. The bookstore later gained wider national recognition after appearing as a filming location for the telenovela Laços de Família (2000-2001). Dalva Gasparian ran Argumento until her death in 2017, after which her children took over: Marcus in financial management, Eduardo running the café, and Laura handling book acquisitions.
Santa Cecília, São Paulo
A Banca Tatuí vende livros, quadrinhos, zines, revistas: só independentes, sem preconceito.
Best for Books
São Paulo
Livraria da Vila is an independent São Paulo bookseller with a verified Vila Madalena branch. Its broad catalogue and event programme make it a genuine current door, though no official URL was supplied.
Best for Independent bookselling
Avenida Paulista, São Paulo
The museum shop of MASP on Avenida Paulista sells exhibition catalogues and anthologies published by the museum alongside branded MASP-line goods, plus a curated selection of Brazilian design objects and artisan crafts, including handwoven pieces from indigenous communities such as the Sateré Mawé. It also stocks books on art, architecture, and photography from outside publishers.
Best for MASP exhibition catalogues, Brazilian design objects and indigenous handwoven crafts
Paraty / Brazil
On a smallholding by the bay nine kilometres from Paraty, the Maria Izabel family has distilled organic artisanal cachaca from their own cane since 1996. Visitors book a walk through the whole process ending in a tasting, and the aged and silver bottlings can also be bought through the online shop.
Best for Cachaca, artisanal spirits, organic, distillery
Pinheiros
Instituto Tomie Ohtake is a Cultural institute with gallery shop, offering exhibitions, design objects and architecture books.
Best for Exhibitions, design objects and architecture books
Ipanema
Livraria da Travessa is a Rio bookstore chain with curated selections and carefully designed interiors.
Best for Livraria da travessa
Rio Vermelho, Salvador
Mídialouca is a bookstore at Rua da Fonte do Boi 81 in Salvador’s Rio Vermelho neighbourhood. Its official site presents both the physical shop and an online catalogue of books.
Best for Books
São Bento do Sapucaí / Brazil
Hand-bound albums, boxes and fine stationery from a bookbinder-run school-atelier in Brazil's Serra da Mantiqueira.
Best for Hand-bound albums, boxes and fine stationery
O Velho Livreiro is a bookbinding school and atelier founded by bookbinder-instructor Pablo Peinado and bookbinder-woodworker Alessandra Evangelho, who describe their operation on their own site as "a school and atelier of bookbinding and fine stationery offering courses and workshops in-person and online, for those wanting to enter the world of paper and the arts of the book." The business began in São Paulo's Vila Madalena neighborhood before relocating in 2020 to the Serra da Mantiqueira mountains, where it now runs as a school-atelier combining teaching with artistic-residency stays.
The workshop's output is not limited to instruction: its site lists fine stationery and custom paper goods — albums, boxes, notebooks and editorial projects — plus handcrafted bookbinding tools and equipment (presses, perforators, folders) built for the trade rather than bought in. O Velho Livreiro also coordinates a network of certified bookbinders across Brazil who take on personalized commissions and editorial production support, positioning the atelier as a hub for the craft nationally rather than a single-city storefront.
The founders' choice to relocate from a São Paulo neighborhood studio to a dedicated mountain school-atelier, and to build their own tools rather than resell others', points to a business organized around the craft itself rather than around retail volume. Two named practitioners, a documented decade-plus of continuous operation across two locations, and a stated mission centered on bookbinding and paper arts support treating this as a genuine dedicated bindery and teaching workshop, not a general crafts shop.
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