As part of our London stationery trail we visited Il Papiro, the idyllic stationery shop in the heart of Covent Garden.

When I walked into the shop, I was instantly reminded of Ollivanders™, the wand shop in Diagon Alley™ from the Harry Potter™ movies. There were shelves laden with an assortment of notebooks, diaries, cards, boxes and photo albums all bound in the distinctive hand-made marbled paper. The sight was breath-taking. Not only were there shelf-upon-shelf of paper products but there were also a wide range of pens, inks, stamps and other writing implements.

The shop keeper explained the Il Papiro paper-making and marbling process and showed us photographs of each stage.

We were told we would be welcome to watch the process first-hand at their partner shop in St Christopher’s Place, Marylebone, where they still make the paper using the same method as was used by the founders, Francesco Giannini and Gianni Parenti, forty years ago in Florence, Italy.

Il Papiro is definitely a great shop to pop into if you love stationery. There is so many items to browse and feel. I could not resist buying myself my first ever quill and choose the blood red ink. I plan to review this quill and the ink on Papers Pens Poets one day.

To find out more about Il Papiro and view their online shop go to: www.ilpapiro.co.uk

You can also follow them on Twitter @IlPapiroFirenze