Yard-O-Led, a pen brand with a 200-year history, has opened its first standalone store – and a sense of colour, joy and tactility is headlining. Its new Piccadilly Arcade store features an Edwardian fireplace painted in burnt orange, leaf motif wallpaper, a fabric-skirted bar and a mustard-coloured banquette, and is a continuation of the brand’s mission.
“We want to remind people that writing is a lovely experience,” says Giles English, who operates the heritage brand with his brother Nick English. The company earned its name because one of its early propelling pencils was the first to hold a yard’s worth of lead. “We weren’t keen on creating something that looked like an old-fashioned jewellery store, full of intimidating cabinets. A pen is something to connect with, to see, touch and hold. So, the setting needed to feel special, but homely too.”
Yard-O-Led quietly produces fine silver pens and pencils from its workshop in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, where three quarters of the world’s pen nibs were made in the 19th century. Now, the brand is the city’s sole remaining pen maker and Nick and Giles – who also founded watch company Bremont 30 years ago – are busy reappraising the pen’s place in the world, and our relationship with it.
“I trained as an engineer and have always been interested in how things are made,” Giles tells Broadsheet. “That’s one of the reasons I love watches, because they are design masterpieces. But over time, they’ve also become a means to show off wealth, which is much less interesting to me. The pen, on the other hand, remains all about craft.”
That craft is being plied at the Birmingham workshop, which houses three of the UK’s last remaining engine turning machines (used to create patterns on the pens) and a selection of jigs and lathes, all instruments that have been in use for at least a century. Much of the production, from chasing and soldering to polishing and filing, is still done by hand. When Nick and Giles took on the brand in 2024, their first task was to ensure those skills were not lost, whether through training experienced silversmiths in the art of pen- and pencil-making, or by taking on young apprentices. “Writing instruments like these are designed to last a lifetime,” says Giles, “which, in a world where two billion plastic pens are thrown away each year, feels like a worthwhile enterprise”.
With its tall convex windows, which are distinctive to Piccadilly Arcade’s shopfronts, the store reflects the brand’s heritage. But its relaxed scheme, by interior designer Josephine Maydon, tells a more modern story. Elegant lighting by Pooky glows alongside wallpaper by Molly Mahon, and the drawers of vintage shop furniture overflow with bespoke paper, postcards and ink cartridges so that visitors can try the writing instruments. Upstairs, a copper-tiled bar is designed to host regular events, from book launches to community evenings for pen enthusiasts.
Crucially, the brand’s long-forgotten stories have been unearthed and brought to light as bespoke pens. There’s The Lucky, named in honour of a young lieutenant whose Yard-O-Led pencil took a bullet while he was serving during WWII, saving his life. Regarded as his lucky charm, its battered form eventually found its way back to the workshop, inspiring the re-issue of the long-discontinued design, with its square body and unusual ball clip now available in sterling silver or gold vermeil. Likewise, the petite Pocket fountain pen has been reintroduced, updated with a screw top, a bi-colour brass and silver finish and an enamel “coin” inset into the base.
“A brand like Yard-O-Led really needs to have one foot in the past and one in the future, because it’s all about telling new stories,” says Giles. “Our instruments have been used by playwrights including Noël Coward or novelists like Philip Pullman, but I believe that handwriting isn’t a rarefied art. There’s an increasingly younger audience who want to escape from the demands of laptops and small screens, albeit briefly. These days, we all write less by hand, but when we do, it has to be an enjoyable experience. To us, that’s what makes the pen more relevant today than ever.”
Yard-O-Led
5 Piccadilly Arcade, SW1Y 6NH
02036174224
Hours:
Mon to Sat 10am–6pm
