Since starting in the fountain pen hobby last year, I’ve done most of my pen and ink shopping online. This is quite a niche hobby, and so most of the regular stationery stores only stock a few Lamy Safaris and a bottle or two of Parker Quink ink. So any opportunity to shop for pens and inks in person is extremely exciting to me!

That’s why I had such an amazing time at the Northern Pen Show in April, and why I made specific plans to visit the stationery shop Choosing Keeping on my trip to London earlier this week. I found out about the shop online, and saw that they stocked a lot of pens and inks, but wasn’t sure how much they were likely to have on display in the actual store. So I was delighted to find plenty of fountain pen supplies to browse when I visited!

I didn’t take any photos in or around the shop when I was there because I always feel super awkward taking photos in public, let alone inside a busy shop, but it was a really beautiful store with a distinct vibe of its own. It was very antiquey, with wooden display cases full of pens, and a wall covered in stands of beautiful wrapping paper, and beautifully arranged tables piled high with fabric notebooks (which I was very tempted by!).

The fountain pen inks were on a small display just inside the door, and at first glance it didn’t look like they had a huge array. But the little swatch booklets showed a lot more inks, and according to the staff (who were lovely and friendly!) they had lots of other inks in the back. They definitely had a good mix of well-known brands like Sailor, Noodlers, Pilot and Herbin, and a few others that I’d never heard of that looked interesting. 

I hadn’t come in looking for any specific inks, and figured since I was shopping in person for a change it might be fun to pick a couple of random ones off the shelf that I liked the looks of. So after some deliberation (and my poor fiancé frantically flipping through swatch books to find swatches of the ones I was interested in) I chose a scented Herbin ink in Orange, and my first ever Sailor Ink Studio ink in 573. I was so excited to get back from my trip and ink some pens up with them, although it almost seemed like a shame to open the beautiful packaging!

I chose two TWSBI Ecos to test out my new inks, as I always feel like they’re good ink testing pens. Although perhaps that’s just because I enjoy being able to see the ink sloshing around in there! 

I put the Herbin Orange in the TWSBI Eco-T Saffron, and I actually really like this pen and ink combination! I usually struggle with the legibility of yellow inks, especially in finer nibbed pens, but this ink is quite a deep golden orange/yellow. I’d definitely say it leans more yellow than orange, despite the name, but because of the orange tint, I think it’s easy to read. 

But it’s the TWSBI Eco Caffe Bronze and Sailor 573 that I’ve truly fallen in love with! I’ve had other brown inks in this pen, but none have been quite right for the warm, chocolate brown of this pen…until now! This ink is almost an exact colour match for the pen, and also a stunning colour in itself. In fact, this might be my favourite ink I’ve tried on my fountain pen journey so far! Which is pretty good going for a random ink I chose off a shelf.

It’s definitely made me eager to try more Sailor inks, as from looking into the rest of the range there seems to be a wide variety of shades, and a lot of them, like 573, are a little more unusual than I’ve seen from some other brands. 

This experience has also made me eager to do more in-person shopping for fountain pens and inks soon, so hopefully I can get to another pen show this year. I suspect I won’t be back in London for quite some time, but I also hope to visit Choosing Keeping again some day, as it was such a lovely little store! 

So do you do much in-person pen and ink shopping? What are some of your favourite stores to visit?