There’s a particular appeal to the general store. You don’t need anything urgently, yet the wares are such items that you could always do with stocking up on and you feel a sense of secure well-being at having that perfectly utilitarian stapler, milk pan, or toothpaste squeezer in your possession. A general store also satisfies your shopaholic impulses while tempering the dopamine spike with practical use as the end game.
Some examples I love: Jasper Morrison’s almost invisible shop at 24b Kingsland Road E2, where I bought my yellow steel stapler 17 years ago (below, a great example of an essential everyday object that brings joy). Morrison also designs saucepans, cutlery and even furniture for Mujithat temple of practicality, where I repeat-buy my cereal bowls, ‘right angle socks’ and 0.7 gel pens.
Then there’s the Manufactured stores in Germany and Austria. I can only imagine the frissons of satisfaction you’d get perusing the oak pen trays and Norwegian wool blankets in the vast department stores (where wearing parts and mechanisms can also be replaced). Think a posh, rustic version of Ikea.
And who doesn’t love a whizz round Labour & Wait (top) for a bottle brush or a tin of almond-scented glue? (Do not spread on toast!) I think that’s the crux of the appeal; it’s the magic formula of expected functional items x an element of surprise. And when you witness this in person, in a store that’s been lovingly stocked and merchandised with a personal touch, you experience the anti-Amazonanti-convenience effect. Pleasurable, tactile and deliberately slow, it’s ‘frictionmaxxing’ in the best way!
Even in India, where you might say the local market is the ultimate general store, they’re opting for a more upscale approach. General Items in Bangalore sells decidedly and-basic kitchenalia and homewares like Tosha Jagad’s butter dish (below) alongside its own handmade salt and pepper mills to the type of customer used to browsing Dover Street Market or The Conran Shop.
My personal weakness is stationery and desk paraphernalia. Present & Correct is my go-to for extremely useful jumbo paperclips and smooth-papered desk planners. There’s simply no fun in buying this stuff online; the pleasure comes from touching the products IRL and imagining how they’re going to transform your life.
And that brings me to the latest offering from Parisian retail polymath, Ramdane Touhami. Brand new to Paris’s Palace Royal arcade is his delightful-sounding new venture, Paper Royal. With its mosaic floor and old-meets-new vibe, it’s a printed correspondence Mecca like no other. Celebrating the dying – but not if he can help it – art of paper correspondence, Touhami offers original fonts for monogrammed correspondence cards printed on a 19th century ‘pendulum stamping device’.
Proclaiming “sending letters is the next level of luxury” to HTSIhe also stocks pens at every price point, fancy envelopes, and all grades of pencil. And the store boasts its own postage stamps created in collaboration with the French mail service – how incredibly chic!
WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGES: Labour & Wait; Disneyrollergirl; General Items; Royal Palace by Julien Liénard for HTSI
NOTE: Most images are digitally enhanced. Some posts use affiliate links and PR samples. Please read my privacy and cookies policy here
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