My former roommate and I used to call stationery shops “danger zones” because we couldn’t leave them without spending all of our grocery budget. The Japanese ones were the worst and would inevitably lead us down the path of another week of ramen dinners. London-based Present & Correct falls into the same category; so danger zone alert: after operating as an online outfit, the shop recently opened a brick-and-mortar outpost on Arlington Way.
Present & Correct owners Neal Whittington and Mark Smith, two graphic designers, wanted the shop to look as similar as possible to the design of their virtual presence; an evolution of the online store. Whittington and Smith built out the store with the same materials they styled their online wares with: birch ply, peg boards, and lots of graph paper. The shop stocks hardworking office essentials like scissors and writing utensils, organizational tools and must-have-but-not-sure-why items like German and Belgian invoice pads (Whittington and Smith travel Europe in search of rare paper ephemera); there’s also a stationary vending machine. For more information, visit Present & Correct and see our first piece on their company, Schooled in Stationary.
Photographs courtesy of Present & Correct unless otherwise noted.
Above: Whittington designed all of the furniture, including the counter, and built it along with Smith and Whittington’s father.
Above: Each birch ply unit sits on catering castors and some table legs are made from £3 rolling pins from the supermarket that they cut down and screwed on.
Above: A gray painted pegboard displays items such as Brass Scissors with contrasting black rubber rings (£10) and Italian Staplers in blocks of color (£14.50). Photograph via Shopikon London.
Above: Photograph via Shopikon London.
Above: A pair of Big Spanish Brushes that are made in Seville (£11.50 each) sit on a plywood shelf. Photograph via Shopikon London.
Above: An open desk set up with office supplies.
Above: A set of pink and red giant pencils in the shop’s window on Arlington Way. Photograph via Shopikon London.
Traveling to London but looking beyond stationery and desk goods? Sift through all our suggestions on Shops in and around London in our City Guides. Staying home? Get busy and Build Your Own Industrial Mod Desk, then grab a Table and Desk Fan, and finally some Precision Desktop Accessories from Spain.
Location of Present & Correct in London:
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