An arch of louvers continues from the entrance to the staircase bookshelves... First, a scaffold was erected and the bookshelves were installed in the atrium. Next, the scaffolding was removed and the steel frames were installed to form the bottoms of the stairs. After that, the scaffolding was set in place again and the arch was installed above the atrium. Finally, the thin stair treads were placed on the steel frames.
The Waseda International House of Literature
The Parigi armchair, the Cartesio bookcase, the Consiglio table, and the Museo chair are emblematic works that fully express Aldo Rossi’s idea of furnishings as architecture.
The average Briton owns more than 50 books, but do they organise them alphabetically, by colour, genre, or size - or simply let chaos reign? Our research shows that many simply prefer to let chaos reign, and have no system at all. Men are slightly more likely to prefer an anarchic bookshelf (45%) than women (41%). Just 4% of Britons own no books whatsoever, with men (6%) twice as likely as women (3%). On the other side of the spectrum, 5% of both genders claim to own more than 1,000 books. Those in social grade C2DE are less likely than those in ABC1 to organise their books alphabetically, by colour, by genre or by size - but they are more likely to have no system at all (49%, compared to 39% of ABC1).
The latest issue of Fine Books magazine has a piece by me on the anniversary of the publication of Books do Furnish a Room by Anthony Powell in his A Dance to the Music of Time sequence. Recent posts by me for the magazine's website include A Typewriter Revolution in Scotland, Aphra Behn Statue Planned for Canterbury, Tenth-Century Exeter Book Digitized, and Mrs. Gaskell’s Bedroom Gets a Makeover.
A non-bookshelf post today since it's the official publication day of my latest book, Art Day By Day: 366 Brushes With History - look out for quizes and other stuff on the publisher Thames & Hudson's instagram page. It's history of art meets almanac, providing a unique daily snapshot of the most exciting, unusual, and noteworthy art events from around the world and throughout history through direct testimonies, eyewitness accounts, and contemporary chroniclers.
Drawing on articles, diaries, interviews, letters, speeches, transcripts, and more, Art Day by Day offers an important event that happened on that day in the history of art. Here are the stories of famous paintings, ancient sculptures, comic strips, photographs, murals, manifestos, and marriages, from terracotta soldiers to a self-shredding Banksy. Not every entry is momentous, but each one is significant. Yes, there are thefts, murders, artistic mishaps, and eureka moments, but there are also episodes such as President Theodore Roosevelt’s doodles, Michelangelo writing to his nephew about his kidney stones, and Monet getting the green light for his water garden. Every day has a story to tell.
A foldable bookshelf, a drawer and a cabinet. The project is made as a Swedish cabinetmakers journeyman’s piece, which has to meet several requirements such as a drawer, hinges, veneered surfaces etc. This set the base for the work. All three pieces follow a consistent line, framing the books and objects on the shelves, in the cabinet, and in the drawer. The collection is created for modern living and adapted to continuous moving. A project in collaboration with designer Hanna Höglund.
Top tin titles include 'History of Reading' 'Modern Reading' 'Biscuits' and 'Cakes'. Bottom tin titles are by Sir Walter Scott.
Unique steel staircase with integral library, design proposal for a private client, London, UK.
"Two custom designed loft beds carefully integrated into the bedrooms of an apartment in a converted industrial building. The alternate tread stair was designed to be a perfect union of functionality, structure and form. With regard to functionality, the stair is comfortable, safe to climb, and spatially efficient."
I got inspiration from the ancient Chinese grille and designed this bookcase by the form of a grid. The motivation for our design is that this is a free-form bookcase. Too neat a grid is not free. So, we rotate one part of the small box by 45 degrees. This not only fits our design motivation, but also allows users to combine patterns according to their own preferences. Length 124cm x Width 32 cm x Height 186cm
A new collaboration between UK booksellers and authors’ societies will mean that for the first time, writers will receive royalties on secondhand/used book sales. World of Books, the UK’s largest seller of used books, estimates the market for used books in the UK to be growing at 12% per year and will be worth £563 million within four years.
The scheme is called AuthorSHARE and was thought up by William Pryor, chairman of Bristol-based Bookbarn International which sells new, used, and rare books. “As a writer as well as founder of Bookbarn, I was puzzled that authors, the very people who create the raw material of our business, were not benefiting,” he said.
More details at Fine Books magazine
This luxurious revolving bookcase in black walnut is softly nostalgic with a smooth modern revolving mechanism with apertures sized for modern paperbacks. Two sides of the cabinet have shelves extending along its full length to display the book spines whilst the two other sides have apertures to display the book covers. The cabinet rotates on a turntable mechanism which is attached to a solid walnut base. Ariel, a biography of Percy Shelley by Andre Maurois was one of ten titles chosen for the launch of Penguin paperbacks in 1935. The name Ariel apparently comes from the boat which Shelley designed and which was sank off the coast of Italy, leading to his death. Dimensions: 45cm x 45cm x 65c.
Small bookshelf interpreting the moment when the tree trunk is cut and falls to the ground, transforms a structure that initially looks stiff and essential, in a flexible, mobile and lively piece of furniture composed of four elements that can be stacked and fixed to each others, or used individually.
Like a 17th century version of a Kindle. Two red leather cases, designed in the 1970s by Sangorski and Sutcliffe to look like two large books, open up to reveal 59 small volumes covering just about everything that a wealthy educated gentleman would want to read on his travels. Charles I's travelling library was acquired through a bequest. The collection of tiny books have gold-tooled bindings and some are believed to have been signed by the Prince himself. Titles include classical texts by the poet Ovid and the philosopher Cicero as well as bibles and religious books such as De Imitatione Christi by Thomas A Kempis.
Shelf Isolation is one of Phil Shaw's distinctive bookshelf works, in which he arranges a series of genuine book-titles in an artfully-constructed digital bookcase, so that when you read them in order, from left to right, they spell out an unexpected narrative and a much needed message of hope.
