Cloud shelf

The wire ironwork is industrial by nature, yet the cloud design keeps a whimsical touch. Two shelves and seven compartments provide amble space for stationary or books.

• H.54cm
• W.66cm
• D.18cm

Graham & Green

Bookshop for mice in Sweden

A small bookshop for mice. More details here (in Swedish)  and here (in English).
Anonymouse

Improbable Libraries on sale for Christmas

Improbable Libraries: A Visual Journey to the World's Most Unusual Librarieshttps://t.co/Q2VzPQGKZI
Was $45, now $19 w/ promo code AD1647.
See more giftable sale books at https://t.co/xNCUmq7vn1 pic.twitter.com/7Gvny7U1hw

— UCP D2C (@UCPbooks) December 11, 2017

Italic bookshelf

The shelf is very stable and strong as each part is locked by its own position and weight in a structure I developed and named “Controlled Collapse”. Basically, when the shelf is built high, it doesn't loose its strength or stability. Its name “Italic” is derived from the italic typefaces that slightly slant. It has endless arrangement possibilities and has a unique sculptural presence that comes from the direction of the spacers and the fact that the shelves are not aligned.
Ronen Kadushin

Library book trough

Both with narrow rectangular polished tops over a canted book trough with four divisions. Concave, swept mouldings over X-framed ends. Stand upon tapered, turned legs which terminate with pad feet, united by X-framed baluster turned stretchers.
English, circa 1900
Height 33.5” (85cm) Width 36” (92cm) Depth 15.5” (39cm) 
Online Galleries

A Book of Book Lists - out now!

If you liked my previous books - Bookshelf (inspired by this blog) and Improbable Libraries - then I am quietly confident you will like my latest one too, A Book of Book Lists which has just been published by The British Library (keenly priced at just £7.99). Here is the official bumph:

This is a book of book lists. Not of the ‘1,001 Books You MUST Read Before You Die’ variety but lists that tell stories. Lists that make you smile, make you wonder, and see titles together in entirely new ways. From Bin Laden’s bookshelf to the books most frequently left in hotels, from prisoners’ favourite books to MPs’ most borrowed books, these lists are proof that a person’s bookcase tells you everything you need to know about them, and sometimes more besides.Perfect for bibliophiles looking to expand their bookshelves or to learn what their bookcase says about them.

It's already had positive mentions in the media including the Times Literary Supplement and The Idler magazine ("amusing and enlightening" - for more quotes see sidebar, right) and is available from all the usual places, but ideally from your local independent bookshop or The British Library.

WheelyGoodBooks

A good book can be a companion when you’re lonely, a blanket when you’re cold, food when you’re hungry, and a weapon when you feel defenceless.

WheelyGoodBooks is a grassroots non-profit community initiative with a passionate focus upon solidarity, not charity. Our service will begin as a mobile library run from wheely suitcases filled where possible with books that have been requested by our members.

We really welcome involvement on any level from anybody from any background.  To ensure our service meets the needs of those who use it, we especially value involvement from people with past or present experience of homelessness or unstable accommodation.

JOIN US.

Our ideas for the future:
Information and advice for rough sleepers
Signposting to additional services within the Bristol area including legal support, benefits and housing
Distributing homelessness survival guides and handbooks
Campaigning for access to traditional library services
Campaigning against library closures
Campaigning for homelessness rights and Homes for the Homeless
Advice regarding tenants rights, squatting and alternative housing solutions

WheelyGoodBooks

7.5 Color Space bookshelf

A flat bookcase designed to stand on the floor or against a wall with books arranged on the side. Made from aluminium and plastic.  

Lee Seongyong Design

Latte buecherregal

Latte, das Baumarkt Buecherregal. Wir Deutschen sind die Meister der Baumärkte. Durch sie ist eine ungsteuerte, wilde “do it yourself” Kultur entstanden, deren Blüten leider meist im Verborgenen bleiben. Latte ist ein Angebot an alle die auch gerne mal selbst tätig werden wollen.
Alex Valder

Goldstone Books reception desk

We are located at the western edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales, UK and have been selling used books online since October 2004 when we started the business from a garage. Since then we have rapidly expanded and now occupy a 35,000 sq.ft modern warehouse which holds over 700,000 second hand books!
Goldstone Books

White House library Christmas tree

What do these books have in common? Esquire’s World of Golf, Robert Daley’s thriller Tainted Evidence, Simon Stow’s political analysis American Mourning, Dianne E Gray’s coming-of-age story Holding Up the Earth and James Hall’s “odyssey into the spirit world of Africa”, Sangoma?
Well, they’re all green. That was enough for them to be selected as part of the Christmas tree of books that currently stands in the White House library. Melania Trump’s director of communications Stephanie Grisham told the Washington Post that they were chosen “based on their varieties of green colour tones”.
The Guardian

Metropolis

A system composed of seven pieces (coffee table, desk, wardrobe, console, bookcase, horizontal and vertical wall system). Precious walnut wood volumes, framed in black-varnished rectangular structures, evolve through space in increasingly different ways: they outline architectural shapes that, in addition to responding to specific demands, evoke archetypal metropolis skylines, crystallized over time and locked into the collective imagination.
Giacomo Moor 

Drizzle bookcase

Inspired by the visible lines made by falling rain, Drizzle is a bookcase system based on long vertical poles. Made from metal and lacquered in a range of colours, these elements can be arranged asymmetrically to support transparent or frosted glass shelves.
Nichetto Studio

Comfy Cargo Chair

The ‘Comfy Cargo Chair’ originated from the idea to create a piece of furniture which does not predetermine the surface for the user. The object is not finished, but rather requires creative collaboration by the owner. The chair’s form is reminiscent of a three dimensional grid. It consist simply of hollow spaces whose open structure requires filling with personal things such as books.
Stephan Schulz

Beijing underground trains 'bookshelves'

Subway trains in Beijing transformed into QR code audio libraries as part of the city's literacy programme. More details at Mashable (in English), Golem (in French) and Weibo (in Chinese).

MinimumBook bookcase

The Suspended Bookcase is characterized by a single bar in stainless steel and a series of shelves in solid seasoned rooted oak (quercia in radice), attached to the bar by nuts and bolts in stainless steel. The shelves can be adjusted in order to fit your cataloguing requirements or simply to accommodate books of varying sizes. Suspended model which is fixed to the wall using stainless steel attachments.
Minimum[Book]

minimumbook from Zetalab on Vimeo.

Tianjin Binhai Library

The library, one part of a larger cultural complex masterplan,  bases itself around a spherical auditorium which, coupled with the main atrium, forms an eye that acts as a focal point for the interior space. Terraced bookshelves echo the sphere throughout the atrium, leading users up into the heart of the library, before continuing around the building as louvers.
MVRDV

The New Yorker

At the Strand by Jenny Kroik
“I like to loiter around the city looking for interesting things,” the artist Jenny Kroik says. Her painting for this week’s cover depicts another loiterer at the Strand Bookstore, a beloved institution in lower Manhattan. “I have tried to do a painting a day since I moved here from Oregon, a year and a half ago. Bookstores are really good places for inspiration–you see people interacting with the books they have an affinity for, you see how people consume the culture. Sometimes someone will be dressed in a similar way to things he or she is looking at. I love these sort of poetic fun moments.”
The New Yorker

Pacioccò - hammock bookcase

Paciocco is an armchair in solid ash wood. The assembly of the structure is completely without screws, nails or glue, it is simply to draw. The sitting is suspended, to emulate the thrill you get when you relax in a hammock.
By Tomas Bordignon for Punto Soave

Picturebook frame

Display your favourites in this wall-mounted, specially designed book frame (3 in a row look stunning!). Everyone has a favourite book - it may be one with an iconic cover; a much loved childhood classic; or the one you've written! Unfortunately, short of ripping the front cover off and destroying a beloved book, there's no way of putting them proudly on show in your home. Until now. 
Suck UK

A Book of Book Lists

If you liked my previous books - Bookshelf (inspired by this blog) and Improbable Libraries - then I am quietly confident you will like my latest one too, A Book of Book Lists which has just been published by The British Library (keenly priced at just £7.99). Here is the official bumph:

This is a book of book lists. Not of the ‘1,001 Books You MUST Read Before You Die’ variety but lists that tell stories. Lists that make you smile, make you wonder, and see titles together in entirely new ways. From Bin Laden’s bookshelf to the books most frequently left in hotels, from prisoners’ favourite books to MPs’ most borrowed books, these lists are proof that a person’s bookcase tells you everything you need to know about them, and sometimes more besides.Perfect for bibliophiles looking to expand their bookshelves or to learn what their bookcase says about them.

It's already had positive mentions in the Times Literary Supplement and The Idler magazine ("amusing and enlightening") and is available from all the usual places, but ideally from your local independent bookshop or The British Library.

Book throne / Bücherthron

The series of three wooden pieces of furniture offers your favourite books an exceptional home. “Bücherthron” (books throne) and “Schmökerhocker” (browsing stool) additionally function as seating-accommodation, thus they make up a new type of furniture. While “Bücherthron” primarily provides space for pocket books and newspapers, your beloved coffee-table books will find room in “Schmökerhocker”, which provides those of us who prefer to sit and read on the carpet with a comfortable backrest. The natural habitat of “Nachtlektüretisch” is your sleeping room, where this bedside cabin will huddle against any edge of your bed. All pieces are made from European beech and have been treated with linseed oil.
Lucia Grompone

Bookselling Britain: the economic contributions to – and impacts on – the economy of the UK’s bookselling sector

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) unveils today that bookshops can be linked to an estimated £1.9bn contribution to UK GDP annually and to the support of 46,000 jobs, as part of a report evaluating the contributions made by the UK’s bookselling sector... But ‘standard’ measures like contribution to GDP or employment fail to capture the valuable, and potentially underestimated, role of bookshops as cultural hubs or venues for people that want to engage with the literature art form and interact with others about it.
Full report at The Centre for Economics and Business Research
Photo by Michael Maggs

The Early Roxburghe Club 1812-1835 by Shayne Husbands: book review

Some of you will be at least faintly familiar with The Roxburghe Club, founded in 1812 and the self-proclaimed "oldest society of bibliophiles in the world". But a common misconception about the club is that it was essentially a group of several dozen toffs, knocking back the claret, and indiscriminately frittering away their ill-gotten millions on any fancy-looking books that came their way, a kind of literary Hellfire Club but with fewer caves.

This is - as Shayne Husbands explains in her excellent and very readable book (subtitle: Book Club Pioneers and the Advancement of English Literature and published by Anthem Press) - a country mile wide of the mark. Instead, she patiently shows how aristocrats were in fact in the minority, and that rather than mere book collectors, the members were forerunners of the arts and crafts movement in their dedication to style and commitment to the printed word, several of them even owning and running their own presses.

They were also considerable scholars, especially in promoting Shakespeare and early Tudor poets, as well as talented writers themselves. While it is true that some of their collections do more than border on the obsessive - Thomas Dibdin who co-founded the club did not coin the term 'bibliomania' but did much to promote its useage -  Husbands shows that their overriding interest was not merely to own 'pretty books' but to safeguard part of the nation's literary heritage that would otherwise have probably disappeared.

Although this will be largely read by academics, its 180 intelligent and thoughtful pages deserve a much wider readership, and many visitors to Bookshelf would certainly enjoy it.

Oversized First Edition Artwork

Oversized First Edition Artworks are a novel way to make a big impression on your walls, a nearly 4 ft. impact, to be exact. Authentic book spine designs are precisely captured in every detail, then recreated on gallery-wrapped canvas. Canvases are then carefully mounted in premium, walnut floater frames for an elegant, finished look that enhances the beauty of the work.
Grandin Road

Spiral bookcase

A plywood sprial around vertical supports.
Philippe Nigro

Ecopunk!

A few years ago, I came across a book called Improbable Libraries by Alex Johnson. And it was here that I learned of the Biblioburro. Under a chapter entitled ‘Animal Libraries’, I learned of primary school teacher Luis Soriano and his two donkeys, carrying books to remote communities in Colombia. I learned of an elephant called Boom-Boom, bringing fairy tales and dinosaur books to children in Laos; camel libraries in Kenya; Donkey Drawn Libraries in Zimbabwe; nomadic writers on reindeer in Mongolia. All over the world, there are passionate people braving deserts, storms and bandits to bring books to children in isolated communities.

My story, "The Wandering Library", was inspired by these heroic champions of literacy and education. It follows the journey of Lani Bashir, a travelling librarian, as she navigates a world transformed by rising seas and genetically modified creatures, visiting communities powered by sun, wind, sea and cheese.
DK Mok at Ticonderoga Publications

Chocolate library

It’s not only national Libraries Week this week, it is also the UK’s national Chocolate Week! So now the challenge was to create said chocolate library. Yes, a whole stack of books made out of chocolate, ready to be eaten. I’ve made a library out of shop-bought chocolates before, but now I wanted to up my game.
Zoe Toft at Playing by the book

My Miniature Library

My Miniature Library is a kit to make a complete collection of tiny books that you can really read! With stories ranging from illustrated fairytales to well-loved nonsense rhymes and books of butterflies, birds and flowers, plus blank books for you to complete yourself, you'll have everything you need to make a little library of beautifully illustrated books. The books are simple to make – just cut, fold, and glue. The kit comes with a miniature bookshelf to press out and make, and easy-to-follow, fully illustrated instructions. Plus the box transforms into a beautiful library scene.
Laurence King

Archico bookcase

I have always delighted in the monumentality of the past architecture and simplicity of the new, their grace and lightness. So it was decided to find the main and unchanging element in architecture and apply it in design. Projecting, I represented a bright interior, where you could feel the elegance and ease. But the final form of the model and meaningfulness of its content I received during a trip to sunny Italy, with her rich architectural past and greatness. So the arch construction, which was found in every monumental construction and building, was used in the new collection.

Tasha Terenina

London's smallest library at London Design Festival

MINI UK presents the MINI LIVING URBAN CABIN: a communal modular-structure on the Southbank, in partnership with Sam Jacob Studio. MINI launches London's smallest library at London Design Festival. Book lovers will be able to swap well-thumbed favourites for one of the London-themed books at the MINI LIVING - URBAN CABIN, a 15 sqm micro-house, from 20th-24th September.

Architect Sam Jacob pays homage to the British library within the Urban Cabin by installing its very own microlibrary. A response to a decline in the usage of UK libraries, Jacob explains, “London is a city of books before it is a city of architecture. We created this library as an extension to domestic space that contains a certain spirit of the city. Recalling the grand libraries as well as the book-lined studies of domestic life.” The micro-library is filled with a diverse selection of books that describe ways of living in London. A quiet space to enjoy reading, share stories or book recommendations, it creates a perfect contrast to the lively atmosphere of the kitchen.

Rebuilding Mogadishu with books

WOW, Check out new the bookcase in #Mogadishu 😎 Architect @omar_degan's series "Rebuilding Mogadishu with Books" @MogBF #MBF2017 #Somalia pic.twitter.com/A1rk3jua1q

— Integration TV (@IntegrationTV) 11 September 2017

Let's rebuild the nation with books,let's heal its people with reading books,Let's unite Somalis under the books #MBF2017 Pic@IntegrationTV pic.twitter.com/roAkyLzRRu

— Abdifatah Hassan Ali (@IamAbdi5) 11 September 2017

Dentist tooth shelf

Mohammed Siyamand

Plyhouse

The form of a house which will house books and objects recommended by the homeowners taking part in the The Green Door Festival of Rural Architecture & Design. Made from CNC cut Birch Plywood the 4 metre high structure will comprise multiple display shelves.

Thinking Living Dwelling Exhibition Saturday 26th August - Saturday 14th October 2017

 

Leo Scarff

Book Reader Bedding Set

• Bedding set comes with one duvet cover and two pillowcases.
• Comforter, bed sheet and pillow inserts are not included.
• Features a single-sided full color print on luxurious brushed polyester fabric.

ReaderStuffs

WOUPS Invisible shelf

Original, WOUPS gives the illusion that your books are levitated against the wall, hanging in the air like magic! Very decorative, this shelf offers a superb mixture of ash wood and perforated lacquered metal. Very practical, the metal part can be mounted on the left or on the right side which makes it possible to use it as a bedside table on both sides of a bed.
SWAB Design

The Last Bookstore: Annex flexspace concept

Because the book world of adventure, knowledge and science is not black and white, we have created a photo print of a huge colorful bookcase for the middle part: it covers both the floor, wall and ceiling and is the only color accent in space.
M+R

Book cupboard

I need a book cupboard like this pic.twitter.com/Gh4qGHx6K3

— Dom Conlon (@dom_conlon) August 24, 2017

Dryburgh Abbey, Scotland

The 100-year stair at Paju Book City

The 100-year stair forms the main façade of the Rainbow Publishing House building. A bookshelf rises over four stories, with one shelf for each of the years of the twentieth century. The main stair wraps around the bookshelf and tall glazing gives views over all of Paju Book City. As Rainbow publishes small print run biographies of the people who lived through Korea’s rebuilding, the books will be placed on the shelves corresponding to the year in which each person was born. 
Photos: kyungsub shinDesign: DaeWha Kang

This project will feature in my new book, Book Towns, published in spring 2018.