Cowling & Wilcox

The store is very clean and well organized into categories. The prices were okay, however, I have not compared to other art stores in London.
I will say that some of the staff seem a bit unprofessional or incredibly strange, and I found it distracting. While I was shopping around, the sales clerk was laughing hysterically in conversation with a coworker. She was super loud in speaking with her coworker and was cackling away.
Also, at the till, I think the man who rang me out was high or just not friendly. He didn’t make eye contact with me and took several sloppy tries in placing my art paper into a plastic bag. Which was quite worrying since he could have bent or creased my paper that he was throwing around. He was extremely careless in placing smaller items I purchased into my bag as well. If you were not careful or paying attention, you could have easily left the store without all of your items.
This store is really convenient since it is close to where I am living. However, the staff did not leave me a positive impression of this location.

It was a dangerous moment when I first saw the sign for Cowling & Wilcox as I was cycling home from Camberwell one day a few months ago. Since then, and since attending Dr Sketchy’s wonderful life drawing classes at the RVT, I have been back a few times to browse and a few times to buy art supplies. This is not a bad thing, but knowing it’s so close really tempts me to keep going back and spending far too much money on lovely paints and pens and brushes and stuff, even though I can’t draw to save my life.
There always seems to be a few good deals available on certain items, though not to the extent of the sales Cass Art runs all the time, and some of the staff are really helpful. There was one grumpy man there once who referred me to his colleague rather than answer my question himself, then glowered at me as he scanned everything in at the till, but everyone else I’ve spoken to have been pretty nice and didn’t make me feel stupid when I asked basic questions about materials.