Sekaido Art Supplies

Sekaido opened in Shinjuku in 1940 as a shop selling picture frames and paintings. It was incorporated as a company in 1947, and through wartime shortages, including a cut-off supply of glass, it held to a motto of better goods at lower prices. Over the decades it widened its range to art materials and design supplies as well as stationery. The Shinjuku main store burned in 1990, and the company traded from a temporary shop nearby until a new headquarters and store building opened at Shinjuku 3-1-1 in 1994. That nine-storey building has sales floors on five levels and a gallery on the sixth. The first floor carries stationery and fountain pens, and the second holds papers and drafting tools alongside design and comic supplies. The third is given to paints and printmaking materials, with plaster casts and easels. Frames fill the fourth and fifth floors. Watercolour and photo frames sit below, and larger frames for hanging works and for oil paintings sit above. Canvas stretching and framing are done in house, and a branch opened at Ikebukuro Parco in 1969. Others followed in Nagoya and on two art school campuses, while the Shinjuku store remains the flagship.