The small, the true
Choosing Keeping is a shop. We sell paper, pens, paints, and objects for the desk. We bring them from far places: silkscreen paper from Kyoto, glass pens from Germany, oil paints from the English countryside. Each thing is chosen with care and intention.
We look for what is rare, what is honest. We avoid 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. Our shop is not just a place to sell but a record of travel, of work, of life - 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: Beadworks, which ran for 50 years from 1967 to 2017. Earlier still, 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.
Objects on stage
Once, shops were places of encounter. People came not only to buy but to be. To talk. To linger. Every object had meaning; it told you where it came from, who made it, and why it mattered.
That’s mostly gone now. We buy what is easy, what is cheap, and we don’t think much more about it.
Choosing Keeping is a return to the story, to the thread that connects an object to its maker, and its moment in time.
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 tracing those stories: reading old catalogues, visiting factories and their workers to find out more. 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 — are fragments of our social history. These things aren't nothing, they nurture our own wistfulness for identity, memory. They are worth preserving and protecting.
Among the flowers
We began in 2012, on Columbia Road. Every Sunday, that street is filled with flowers — buckets of colour, petals, noise. It was there, in the midst of colour and noise, that Choosing Keeping first opened its doors. A small place, full of chosen things. The name Choosing Keeping made sense. It meant what we believed: to choose well, and to keep forever.
From the beginning, we treated our products like museum pieces, labelled with year and place of origin, marked with cultural meaning. By 2018, thanks to our customers, we outgrew Columbia Road. On Tower Street we found the stage we had been looking for — more space to display, yes, but also the life of Soho at our door. A place where London gathers, and where our shop could become both part of the crowd and apart from it.
The thread remains.
Nowadays, all day, people come and go — artists, students, collectors, travellers. Some know exactly what they want, others just wander in, curious. Regulars drop by for ink refills, while first-timers stumble across us by chance. A designer comes to test brushes, 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: 10.30am to 6pm
Sunday: 11.30am to 5pm
Enquiries
General inquiries: info@choosingkeeping.com
Orders: orders@choosingkeeping.com
Press inquiries: press@choosingkeeping.com
Tel: 020 7613 3842
Follow: @choosingkeeping
Your Saved Items
