Seven Dials Fountain Pen Shop Open Sunday: Choosing Keeping

Tucked into a short lane between Shaftesbury Avenue and Seven Dials, Choosing Keeping is the London stationery shop people name first when someone asks where to hold a fountain pen before buying it. The shop lives at 21 Tower Street, London WC2H 9NS, a few minutes on foot from Covent Garden or Leicester Square stations, and it treats writing tools the way a good wine merchant treats bottles: shelved by maker, explained by the staff, and chosen slowly. Japanese pens, European workhorses and dozens of bottled inks share the room with handmade paper, which is exactly why it suits a first pen as well as a fifth.

Choosing Keeping began in 2012 as a small shop on Columbia Road in East London, the street better known for its Sunday flower market. By 2018 the stock of paper, pens and desk objects had outgrown that space, and the business moved west to its current home on Tower Street. The idea has stayed the same through both addresses: stock well-made, practical writing things from small makers and let customers handle them properly before deciding.

The building carries its own backstory. According to the shop's history page, the premises housed Beadworks for half a century, from 1967 to 2017, and before that it was Dobells, the jazz record shop that musicians and collectors treated as a pilgrimage stop. Standing at the counter today, surrounded by quiet paper and glass ink bottles instead of LPs, you are in a room that has been selling specialist goods to obsessive customers for a very long time.

The fountain pen range runs well past a hundred models online, and the shop floor carries a careful cross-section of it. For a sturdy starter, the yellow Lamy Safari is listed at £25, a triangular-grip school classic with a steel nib that forgives heavy hands. The Kaweco Dia 2 at £125 is a step up: a slim, vintage-shaped German pen with chrome trim that clicks shut and slips into a jacket pocket without fuss.

The pens that make collectors linger are the Japanese ones. An Ohnishi Seisakusho tortoiseshell celluloid fountain pen sells for £160, made by a small Japanese workshop known for turned celluloid bodies. Celluloid has a depth that resin never quite matches, and in daylight from the front window the brown and amber layers look almost liquid. If you have never written with a fine Japanese nib, ask to try one beside a European medium; the difference in line width surprises most people.

Bottled ink is the other reason pen people walk over from Holborn and Soho. The online catalogue lists about seventy-five bottles, and the house favourites lean Japanese. Pilot Iroshizuku Kon Peki, a bright cerulean named after the deep blue of a clear sky, costs £35 for a 50ml bottle with the brand's heavy faceted glass. It behaves well in nearly any pen, which makes it the safe first purchase for someone who has only used cartridges so far.

For something rarer, Kyo-no-oto 07 Denim is a 40ml bottle at £18, made in Kyoto and shading from inky navy to faded jeans as it dries. Swatch cards and a display near the door let you compare colours on real paper rather than a screen. Bring your own pen if you want to see an ink in a specific nib, and buy a notebook from the paper tables to test it on.

Choosing Keeping is a small single room, so the counter is where everything happens. Staff will take pens out of the cases and set them on a writing mat with paper, and the shop's own description says conversations about paper and pens start right there. A designer regularly comes in to test pens, and that habit sets the tone: questions are welcome, and nobody hurries you toward the till. Say what you write most, whether letters, journals or margin notes, and you will be steered to the right nib width.

Weekday mornings just after opening are the calmest time to ask for pen after pen. Saturday afternoons fill with Covent Garden shoppers who wander in for wrapping paper and greeting cards, which makes it harder to claim the counter for twenty minutes. Sundays run on shorter hours and feel relaxed until mid-afternoon. Keep bags small, since the room is compact and the ink display is glass.

Turn left out of the door and Tower Street brings you to Seven Dials within a couple of minutes, where seven streets meet around the sundial pillar. Monmouth Street and Earlham Street spread out from there with independent cafes, perfume shops and record stores, a nice echo of the building's Dobells years. Neal's Yard, the colourful courtyard just north of the junction, makes a good place to sit with a coffee and try out a new pen in a fresh notebook.

Heading south toward Covent Garden Piazza, the Royal Opera House on Bow Street is about ten minutes away, home to the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera that the shop's own history mentions as neighbours. Matinee crowds pour through the area on weekends, so a mid-morning pen visit followed by a walk past the opera house and into the market halls makes a full, unhurried half-day in the West End.

Pens are only half the shop. Tables carry writing paper, cards and notebooks chosen to suit fountain pens, so the ink sits on the page rather than feathering into it. Pairing a pen with paper it actually likes is the most useful advice the staff give, and it turns a single purchase into a proper writing kit. The shop is a go-to for presents for exactly this reason: a Safari, a bottle of Kon Peki and a slim notebook make a complete gift under £100.

The website also runs a free Christmas catalogue with orders for 2026, and the online stock mirrors much of what is in store, so you can shortlist favourites before the trip. If a particular celluloid pen or limited ink catches your eye online, ask staff whether it is on the shelf that day; small-workshop pieces sell through quickly and are not always restocked.

Address: 21 Tower Street, London WC2H 9NS. Opening hours on the shop's contact page are Monday to Saturday from 10 am to 6:30 pm, and Sunday from 11:30 am to 5:30 pm. The nearest Underground stations are Covent Garden on the Piccadilly line and Leicester Square on the Northern and Piccadilly lines, each a short walk through the lanes.

Prices quoted here are the shop's own listings: Lamy Safari £25, Kaweco Dia 2 £125, Ohnishi Seisakusho celluloid pen £160, Iroshizuku Kon Peki 50ml £35 and Kyo-no-oto Denim 40ml £18. Budget extra for paper if you are new to fountain pens, because cheap copier paper hides what a good nib can do. Ask Karpo in the Karpo APP for a route that links this stop with other stationery and bookshops around Covent Garden.