Thoughtful shelf

The Thoughtful Shelves were designed to be a fun and clever way to display your books and collectibles. The design was intended to convey the creation of an idea or conversation and makes for a unique piece of furniture. The bubble shelves create a focal point for the piece and this allows you to show off the ideas and concepts you love most. Also, the Thoughtful Shelves are a perfect compliment to these ideas, because not only do they showcase your items, but it is an intersting design idea itself
Matt Dennis

Shipwood Dark Bookcase

Fashion for home

Merry Christmas to all our readers

Cage-B

Massimo Castagna

Paradoxymoron

Patrick Hughes

TarGetBooks

Mebrure Oral

Shellf

The title of Ka-Lai's latest product SheLLf is in fact a linguistic and conceptual amalgamation of ‘shell’ and ‘shelf’. Like a shell, it undulates from flatness to depth, creating a dynamic space. Made of separate compartments that are arranged in a gently increasing and decreasing way, it seems as if the shelf is crawling across the wall, literally growing out of the wall, like an animal crawling out of its shell. The cabinet’s outside has a perfectly smooth, glossy black mirror-like textured surface. Inside, a rough reddish, grainy, untreated wood creates a startling contrast. SheLLf is available in three sizes: small (124 x 74cm), medium (217 x 130cm) and large (311 x 223cm).
Ka-Lai Chan

Anita

¡Personaliza tu casa con la estantería ANITA! En versiones de pared y de suelo, ANITA se compone de letras que unidas forman palabras para sustentar libros, marcos de fotos o lo que tú prefieras. ¡Configura tu propia estantería!
Ricard Mollon

Bookshelf arrangement 'a matter for extreme anxiety'

Radio 4

The Motion

The concept of ”The Motion” is space beyond the predominant view that furniture is just arranged in a room. It has not only a storage function but also space for reading and relaxation. This mobility of this book shelf gives users unexpected pleasure. Design by Hyunjin Seo.

kamkam

Books - The Last Chapter?

With the rise of electronic books, is the final chapter about to be written in the long love story between books and their readers? Will the app take the place of the traditional book? Alan Yentob discusses the subject with writers Alan Bennett, Douglas Coupland, Ewan Morrison and Gary Shteyngart, publisher Gail Rebuck, agent Ed Victor and librarian Rachael Morrison. They also smell books, making precise notes about the distinctive aroma of each.
BBC

Does this look good on my bookshelf?

As academics offer their elegies for the printed book, consumers might notice more books being sold outside their traditional habitat. Volumes increasingly accent the window displays of stores like Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters, embellishing the complex décor with a quaintly vintage charm. Leaving behind the drab arena of bookstore window displays, these books for the aesthetic elite aspire to adorn the bookshelves and coffee tables of the cultured bourgeois, the slouching hipster, and the traditionally bibliophobic. What these books lack in content they make up for in beauty. They look trendy and seem to whisper, “Buy it. Who knows? You might even read it.
Harvard Political Review

Books: free wrapping paper

What could be better for your book gifts? To get your paper (post free in the UK only), please email: marketing@thameshudson.co.uk
Thames & Hudson

Pin Pres

Pin Pres is a kid’s room shelf that makes the act of sorting up the room a playful experience where the shelf adopts its form to the toys, books and other things that are being stored. It's the only shelf that will make your kid actually want to clean up and declutter the room!
OOO My Design

How to Build a Hidden Door Bookshelf

Do you have a door to a storage area or, perhaps, a secret room? What better way to hide it than to build a bookshelf that not only holds your books and decorations, but also swings open to provide access to your little hideaway?
wikiHow

"These are the books I never had a chance to finish..."

Book as block, block as type

This series is based on Thomas Fuller’s statement A book that is shut is but a block.
Shelves are used as a typographic grid; books are considered for their shape and colour, rather than content. Building up the letters reminded me very much of typesetting, as every type made of coloured books had to be blocked with white books, just as it is done in letterpress, where large areas of white space are created by the wooden blocks called furniture.
Amandine Alessandra

Babel

Babel is a five-tier bookshelf with a trunk-like, conical form made of moulded polyethylene using a rotational technique and is available in various colours. The surface has irregular lines, giving it a natural texture. The circular base means it can easily be placed in any home or contract environment. Suitable also for outdoor.
Mario Mazzer for Bonaldo

TARDIS bookcase

The RPF

Balloon bookcase

Baloon fits perfectly into those places where children like to go to play and use their imagination, becoming a companion in adventure, a secret hiding-place for their special objects, a stage for puppets, an improvised television. This is what design can do: it allows you to take an object and give it multiple functions, it allows you to make the environment around you a place of stylistic experimentation, a reflection of your personality.
MATERIAL: structure in melamine faced chipboard, frame in lacquered MDF
COLOURS white | black
DIMENSIONS: W 62 x H 50 x D 26 cm
DESIGN: Giorgio Franchini
PRODUCTION: Sepa (Italy)
Bouf

Assouline Custom-Built Library Fantasy Gift

The publishing house renowned for its beautiful volumes and cultural perspective is offering the ultimate enriching addition to your home: a bespoke library. From floor to ceiling and wall to wall, every nuance of this room will reflect the company's brilliant style—through custom carpeting, objets d'art, and beautifully framed prints—as well as your intellectual viewpoint. When the decor is complete, the shelves will be lined with a one-of-a-kind Assouline collection, consisting of 250 current and vintage volumes in the genre of your choice. You'll enjoy published works from the world's foremost artists, photographers, writers, architects, interior designers, and fashion and culinary masters. Get ready to ditch your high-tech tablet and kick back with a real book in the comfort of your very own literary haven. With this purchase, NM will donate $2,500 to First Book, an award-winning nonprofit organization that provides access to new books for children in need throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Neiman Marcus

It's Nice That: bookshelf column

Ever wondered what’s on the bookshelf of some of your favourite creatives? What books they turn to in need of inspiration or reference? Whether they’re a messy Mary or a tidy Tina? Well look no further, because every week we invite someone from the creative industries to share with us not only a rundown of their favourite five books in the whole ruddy world, but also a real-life picture of the shelf on which these esteemed titles live.
It's Nice That

Lovely Rita

Ron Arad for Kartell

Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books

A lovely little book by Leah Price featuring a short essay by her about bookshelves, then a look at the personal libraries of several writers including Philip Pullman, Aliston Bechdel, Stephen Pinker and Junot Diaz including plenty of photographs of their bookshelves and discussions about their bookbuying and bookstoring habits. Certainly the best book about bookshelves published in 2011 and definitely should go in the Christmas stocking of anybody you know who likes reading and books.
Yale Press

19th century book carrier

A mid-19th century walnut double sided book carrier on stand
The Candelabra

Sheep bookcase

Scholas

Kamloops Human Library Project

The Human Library is a mobile library set up as a space for dialogue and interaction. Visitors to a Human Library are given the opportunity to speak informally with “people on loan”; this latter group being extremely varied in age, sex and cultural background.
Kamloops Human Library Project

The shelf – furniture for public order

What actually is a shelf? In English, according to Webster's the word derives from the Old English term for the deck of a ship or a crag or ledge. The German word "regal", by contrast, has been in use since the 17th century and denotes a frame. But the latest edition of Kluge's Etymological Dictionary declares that the origin is not clear. The famed Brothers Grimm dictionary gives other meanings for "regal" as sovereignty, pluralized as "regalia". The register of an organ is likewise called a "regal".
Stylepark

Meta

Meta is a bookcase. It is like a finish line that connects the author with the reader. Sometimes the exceptional nature of an object lies in the initial idea, its novelty, its function, or the new behaviours that are brought about by it. In this case, Mario Mazzer has created a solid and serious bookcase for Twentyfirst. The overlap, and partial penetration and transferring of three parallelepiped shapes, which are hollow in the front, has an asymmetrical, dynamic shape with a strong personality. It is, therefore, a design that mixes geometry and curves with high technology. The product is obtained by a rotating moulding and available in different colours. H1440 x L700 x Deep 360 mm.
Twentyfirst

Boat bookcase

This version stands 36" high, 20" wide, and 9" deep. It can either sit on the floor as a nightstand or can be hung on the wall. There are two hooks on the back spaced 16" apart so it can be hung on two adjacent wall studs for safety. This particular one has the hull painted green with white trim and stained pecan on the inside.
SCBoatworks

The Subconscious Shelf

As a teenage baby sitter, I went straight for the books. No sooner did the door close behind the spruced-up parents than I was on the prowl: the bedside table for erotica, the kitchen counter for cookbooks, the bathroom for magazines, and finally the official living-room shelves. Only then did I scan the refrigerator.
Leah Price in The New York Time

Kant

Kant provides an organized desk area. Due to its folded rear section, the desk offers a place to stow and archive books, files and thousands of other things, which overwhelm us with a messy desk. Kant is available in seat-height and as tablestand. Access the necessary materials fast, while maintaing cleaniness on the work surface.
Nils Holger Moormann

Light reading

Airan Kang’s artistic lexis centers on book-shaped sculptures fashioned out of resin and LEDs... Made with LED devices that emit colored lights programmed to continually change in brightness, hue and intensity, each “book” in this exhibition conflates material and ephemeral depictions of knowledge to realize the pluralistic spaces of our imagination.

For this exhibition, Airan Kang furthers her Digital Book Project. This virtual world was created as an homage to specific books that are her current sources of inspiration. Kang traveled around the world to visit and photograph different bookstores and famous libraries in order to then recreate each environment as digitized versions of the original simulacra. The familiarity of these places gives Kang’s lurid universe an unexpected and sublime sense of organic beauty.

Each of Kang’s unique book covers are modified appropriations of the original covers rather than an exact replica. The “hyper books” are then arranged in stacks to show Kang’s growing interest in the relationship between text and the imagined literary space that the texts represent. This is further asserted as quoted text from each books in LED scrolls across the surface, making the information contained readily available and accessible to the viewer. Thus the content of each book is automatically visible, suggesting an ultramodern view of knowledge and intellect that is predetermined and entitled, rather than learned over time.
Airan Kang

Beautimess

Oon

Sea Defence shelves

Sea Defence is a beautiful and functional collection of furniture bringing together the sculptural, strong and iconic nature of sea defences, creating elegant, usable functional pieces of furniture. The collection is made up from the simple shape inspired by Sea Defences, that line the coasts of Britain. These free standing shelves are hand crafted in Scotland from carefully selected materials, layered birch is pressed to this sculptural shape and finished by hand.
Andy Murray

Circular bookshelf

Fabio Galeazzo

Revolving door bookshelf

A former logo and sign factory has been transformed into a showroom for K-MB Creative Network where fashion brands can be presented in a flexible space. With a rotating bookshelf door.
sigurdlarsen

Jugando tetris - playing tetris

Igloo shelving

Linda Bergroth

Recycled bookshelf

Humberto Campana

Sliced bookshelf

nobody&co

Check shelf

Made of solid maple with a clear gloss finish
BuiltIn Studio

Bathroom bookshelf

Skip Sroka has been practicing interior design since graduating from Cleveland Institute of Art in 1977. Skip practices a design philosophy that emphasizes each client's personal tastes and lifestyle needs in order to achieve interiors that blend fine aesthetics with comfort and function. He feels that a new project should look as if it has always been there; a design in context to its surroundings.
Houzz

Step shelf

Shelf as a stair, divided in two parts and with combinations and possibilities.
Made by solid wood, multi layer wood plated with aluminium, fiber boards glossy lacquered and matt lacquered.
Big part H 98 x L 96 x P 46 cm, Small part H 42 x L 72 x P 46 cm
Marti Guixe

Serpent

A mod­u­lar shelving sys­tem which gives the user an oppor­tun­ity to choose the desired dimen­sions of the shelf. It also allows to com­bine and arrange the shelves to fit vari­ous interi­ors and spaces. The idea of the struc­ture gives numer­ous usage pos­sib­il­it­ies by modi­fy­ing the dimen­sions of the shelves and wires and adjust­ing them to diverse spaces. The struc­ture is plain and makes the product sus­tain­able and easy to recycle.
Bashco Trybek

Designing an infinite digital bookcase

As digital designers, we often think about how to translate traditional media into a virtual space. Recently, we thought about the bookcase. What would it look like if it was designed to hold digital books?
Google

Book spool table

Halligan Norris Smith

Book Worm

Cyrill Drummerson

Horizontal Bookcase

Ju Hyeon Oh and Eun-Jee Kim

Booktree

Domestic bookcase tree
Material: solid wood.
Finishings: ash, tineo and ebony
Dimensions: 90x190x20cm.
DIY assembling
Producer: G&F mobili
Kostas Syrtariotis

The bookshelf book - the cover

This is the front cover of the English language edition of bookshelf which is now available for preorder at amazon.co.uk and amazon.com. I hope you like it. I'll post the other language editions once they're confirmed (the Japanese one is especially intriguing).

Sailor carved bookcase

Circa 1890, American oak and poplar profusely carved bookcase over cabinet w/ nautical and wildlife themes, 74½" high, 32¾" wide, 20" deep.
Thomaston Place Auction Galleries

Spruce Tree Bookcase

Trees are popping up in stylish nurseries everywhere and now Babyletto brings us another way to bring the tree indoors, but this one is totally functional! The tree bookcase adds dimension to the room, while keeping the design costs down.
babyletto

SAI

A modular storage solution with small silicon cubes which have unexpected tactile sensations when touched.
Jiyoung Seo

Stealth shelf

Made of solid walnut with a clear satin finish
BuiltIN Studio

Unread books fill British bookshelves

The majority of books on British bookshelves never have their pages thumbed, a survey has revealed. Research from Lindeman’s wine suggests up to 70% of all household books remain unread, resulting in book ‘waste’ of 80 books per household. And a third of owners even admit they have no intention of reading their books. However, 40% of Brits have admitted to stacking their bookshelves with carefully selected titles that paint a more ‘favourable’ picture of their owners – over half (57%) prefer to fill their book cases with literary classics.
Mirror

Readme

The convergence of a lamp and a shelf. Standing on four legs it also is lightly influenced by the characteristics of a small chest. It still holds the traits of a lampshade which is broken up by shelving. In addition there is a small storage space at the top. The extrapolation of the two convergent origins is the decisive point. Used materials are white maple and coated steel.
Peter Böckel

21st Century Dodos: guest post by Steve Stack

I was delighted to be asked by Alex to appear on this most aesthetically pleasing of blogs as part of the tour to promote my new book, 21st Century Dodos (and as an ebook). The only problem is, he wants me to write about bookshelves whereas I just want to persuade you to buy my book. Oh well, he’s the boss. If he wants bookshelves, bookshelves he will get. I won’t be so crass as to try to foist 21st Century Dodos upon you. This is not the place for such things and I am too classy for that.

I happen to know that Alex is a bit of a fan of the staircase we have at our house. We live in a Victorian terrace and these stairs lead down to our basement kitchen.

They were designed by my wife and she included a neat trick, as you can see.

Drawers! Oh yes, each step contains a deep drawer that is very handy for storing the kids’ art supplies, dozens of DVDs, random bits of junk…

…or wonderful books about the demise of inanimate objects of yesteryear, to offer a random example.

They really have come in handy over the years, hiding a multitude of sins. They also seem to be very popular with visiting tradesmen (that sounds very Downton Abbey, doesn’t it?), with many plumbers, gas men, electricians and jolly delivery folk commenting on them as they make their way back up in hobnail boots.

I also had a crack at ‘designing’ some bookshelves. I needed something specific for the alcoves in our living room (or is it lounge?) and came up with these.

Shall we take a closer look?

Quite thick and fat, aren’t they? Here’s why.

You see, my wife didn’t want my CDs to be out on display, she thinks they are ugly, but I needed them close at hand so that I could pop on a bit of Dinosaur Jr at short notice. This seemed like the perfect compromise: space for compact discs, hidden away from public view, which can double up as a shelf for copies of this year’s ideal Christmas gift.

Marital harmony ensues. Until we come to discuss the toilet library, but that’s another story entirely.