Choosing Keeping

Choosing Keeping is a specialist stationery shop on Tower Street, in the Seven Dials corner of Covent Garden. It stocks carefully chosen writing instruments, paper goods and art materials from international and artisan makers, and it is known in particular for a full in-house gift-wrapping service that reflects the same attention to detail as the stock itself.

The selection spans Japanese and European craft traditions. Brands include Kaweco, Sakura, Wallace Seymour, John Derian and Astier de Villatte, alongside makers such as Ohnishi Seisakusho, Futagami and Steve Harrison, so heritage-quality pens, fine art pigments and designer paper goods share the same shelves. The shop favours quality and craftsmanship over volume, which makes it a destination for people who take writing, drawing and wrapping seriously.

A stationery shop in Covent Garden with its own wrapping paper

Gift wrapping uses the shop's own Italian offset-printed patterned paper, matching Swiss double-satin ribbon and foiled sticker seals in place of tape, finished with a card on which the message is written by hand. Decorative papers and wrapping materials themselves are not wrapped, but fountain pens, notebooks and art materials bought as presents leave the shop ready to give.

Beyond writing tools, the range takes in decorative papers, notebooks, office tools, candles and a small food selection, along with collaborations with artists and designers such as Simone Rocha and Maureen Paley.

What to expect on a visit

The shop opens Monday to Saturday from 10am and on Sunday from late morning. Tower Street is a short walk from the Piazza and from Covent Garden and Leicester Square Underground stations. It sits among the more considered homeware and design shops in Covent Garden, and anyone drawn to well-made objects may also want to see the Japanese kitchen knives at Kataba on nearby Endell Street.