The small, the true
Choosing Keeping is an independent stationery shop. We sell paper, pens, paints, and objects for the desk: silkscreen paper from Kyoto, glass pens from Germany, oil paints from the English countryside. Each item is chosen with care and intention.
We look for what is rare and honest, avoiding the endless noise of cheap goods. We find makers who are specialists – often families, often small workshops – and still work with their hands. Some things we even make ourselves. To us, our shop is not just a business but a record of travel, life and a way of looking at the world.
The street remembers
You will find us on one of Seven Dials’ lesser-known streets, tucked away from the bustle of Covent Garden. Before Choosing Keeping, No. 21 Tower Street was a centre for crafters and teenagers, home to Beadworks for 50 years from 1967 to 2017. Earlier still, it was Dobells, the legendary jazz record shop – briefly relocated here in the 1980s after leaving Charing Cross Road. The Stranglers even filmed part of their video Strange Little Girl on this very street.
This is the legacy we inherit – a history of independence, culture, and London’s social fabric. Today, you’ll find a façade with gilded letters and, inside, a cabinet that once held treasures at the V&A, a fancifully handpainted chest of drawers. The place recalls something from another time, maybe another country – a French shop that no longer exists? It’s theatrical, but it’s also about memory. Outside, our neighbours are the Royal Ballet, the Opera, the National Gallery, the British Museum. We belong here, or at least we try to.
Everyday conservation
Every object comes from somewhere and has a reason to exist, revealing something about where they come from – a region, a tradition, even a moment in history. We are curious about those stories, reading old catalogues, visiting factories and their workers to find out more in our search to trace the stories back. How is something is made and how a design shifts with time and technology.
These questions are fundamental to culture because what we make is who we are. What seems ordinary – a greeting card, a Christmas ornament, a piece of wrapping paper – is a fragment of our social history. These things, though often left out of formal history books, nurture our own wistfulness for identity and memory. They are worth preserving and protecting.
Among the flowers
Choosing Keeping opened in 2012 on Columbia Road, East London's famous flower market. The name was selected to reflect our desire to help customers choose items thoughtfully and keep them forever. Originally the shop centred around classic designs and items with idiosyncratic cultural meaning, and products were labelled according to museum standards, indicating the year of first production and place of origin. It was a quiet little place, enjoying the slow cadence of each day, leisurely chatting with customers one at a time.
Thanks to our customers, by 2018 we had outgrown our shop, so we moved to our current location, on Tower Street. Here we found the stage we had been looking for – more space to display and the life of Soho at our door, a place where our shop could become both part of the crowd and apart from it.
The thread remains.
Nowadays, because Choosing Keeping enjoys a more buzzy environment our team looks to preserve the shop's original earnestness, away from phones and the outdoor modern brouhaha. We welcome the modern-day flâneur to treat Choosing Keeping as their own personal secret, a place to discover and to share with special friends.
At the counter, you'll find our team of friendly creatives, each with their own knowledge and favourites. All day, people come and go – artists, students, collectors, travellers. A designer comes to test pens, a writer to pick out a new notebook. Conversations about paper, about pens, about how things are made start at the counter.
The shop is small but lively, woven into the everyday rhythm of London life.
Contact Us
21 Tower Street
London WC2H 9NS
Google map
Closest tube station is Covent Garden
or Leicester Square.
Opening Hours
Monday - Saturday: 10.00am to 6.30pm
Sunday: 11.30am to 5.30pm
Enquiries
General inquiries: info@olioeosso.mom
Orders: orders@olioeosso.mom
Press inquiries: press@olioeosso.mom
Tel: 020 7613 3842
Follow: @choosingkeeping
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