Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Bookcases, Bookshelves

Disclaimer: I am writing this under the influence of one of those cold-y, flu-y, woozy-type sicknesses that one gets in the winter.  I will strive for coherence.
In picking out furniture and decor, the eternal struggle of mine seems to be between my two great loves: Art vs. Books.  I have a lot of art.  I like to hang that art on the walls.  I also have a lot of books.  I go thin the ranks every so often, but I am the type of reader who revisits books as if they are old friends, and I cannot tell you how often I have gone to locate a book to reread and discovered that my foolish past self had thought me done with it and donated it.  So I am a reluctant giver-away of books.  Ergo: I have hundreds of books.

Many of the larger art books (of which there are quite a few--I am an art historian, after all) have found second lives stacked and used as bedside tables.  But the rest--hardbacks and paperbacks large and small--are stashed all over the house.  A couple hundred live in a trunk in the garage.  I've done this because I was trying to avoid being the person with lots of bookshelves and room for nothing else.  However, I have decided to heck with this, I am going to own my book habit.  I was partially inspired by shots of the Eames house from Eames: the Architect and the Painter, which I finally watched this weekend.  I love their shelves!

I'm on the hunt for shelves.  I'm not looking for anything fancy, just your basic bookstore-type shelves.  Nothing terribly ornamental.  To be clear: I'm not looking to create pretty, curated examples of interior design, just a place to put books.  I'm really loving open-backed shelves, too, if for no other reason than their much easier to dust, and much lighter to move.  Here are some other examples that have caught my eye:
If you can tear your gaze from Matt Bomer's chest, go ahead and check out those shelves.  I LOVE those shelves.  (Here is a Bomer-less shot.)
Greg Wooten's living room, as photographed by Todd Selby.  These are wall-mounted, obviously, which is an option that's a bit more permanent than I'd like at the moment, but I love the simplicity and the arrangement.

Ideally, I'd like something out of the Ikea box if possible, without breaking my very meager bank.  Very likely an impossible project, but I'll be giving it a try!

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