Indeed, it wasn’t until the 17th century, following innovations in binding that allowed books to stand up – and the development of a status-driven trend for reading amid the Paris salons – that the home library, as we know it today, was born. There are magnificent instances within Britain: at Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, books are housed in Georgian-Gothic shelves featuring intricately carved and crenelated arches, the ceiling is adorned with coats of arms and mythical beasts, and the windows filled with stained glass. Edith Wharton, in her 1897-published directive The Decoration of Houses, described a library as affording ‘unequalled opportunity for the exercise of an architect’s skill’. She favoured a two-storied room with gallery and stairs, a domed or vaulted ceiling – and built-in bookshelves.
There’s still opportunity for exciting design, and there are decisions to be made regarding freestanding or built-in shelves, decorative trim, painted detailing, colour, and glass fronts – which are a dust deterrence, and good for first editions, but can feel less friendly if they’re protecting average paperbacks. And friendliness is key, because crucially, today’s archival display isn’t about browbeating visitors into a state of awe regarding our sophisticated intellect and deep pockets. Rather, says Chloe Willis, associate director at Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, a home library is about ‘comfort, and it shouldn’t feel contrived.’ Besides books, it needs ‘a very good chair, a table to pour over larger books, and good light to read by.’
What’s also pertinent is that these days most of us are a bit shorter on space, and so ‘a library may not be called a library, or be only a library,’ observes Chloe. She mentions a recent project’s ‘part library, part study, part snug,’ and Emma Burns, in her country home, has turned a barn into a book room-cum-sitting room-cum-guest bedroom. Turner Pocock have created a library in a downstairs loo (a contentious move in some quarters), Laura Stephens Interiors have designed a library that also serves as a playroom, while for others of us our tomes might take up shelves on corridors or landings – or be spread through a house. And there is a compelling argument for that. Dorothy Draper, in her 1939-published manual Decorating is Fun!, recommended always keeping some books in the sitting room, as they are means of making a room look comfortable and as if it gets plenty of use. Penny Morrison gives the same advice regarding a dining room – a room whose death knell is ever being sounded. Books, repositories of transformative texts and romantic tales, made unpredictable by their variance in size and colour of spine, come with an animated allure. And, emphasises Rita Konig, ‘rooms need things that one does not have any control over.’
Of course, there are those who’d prefer a measure of uniformity, and there are solutions. Edith Wharton recommended rebinding, a hobby Virginia Woolf took up as a teenager, and continued, finding it a relief from the mental strain of writing. The architect William Smalley has installed in his home, à la Queen of France, ‘big built-in cupboards which are lined with shelves, so all my books are hidden away. I’m glad not to have them shouting at me.’ (To note: he also has a bar in those cupboards.) There’s the vogue for storing books with the spines facing in, which can offer a pleasing arrangement of texture, albeit little practical information (to the point that William describes the arrangement as ‘clearly stupid.’) Then, colour can lead a system, as practiced by House & Garden’s Decoration Editor, Rémy Mishon – though she clarifies, ‘never in rainbow order.’
Others follow Aristotle’s example and group by type: fiction, poetry, art, travel. Such selections might be further marshalled, either alphabetically by author, or perhaps by date of publication, which can create parallels between War and Peace, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Lorna Doone, and Good Wives (1869 was a strong vintage.) There’s the Dewey Decimal system as favoured by actual libraries – although that is perhaps an institutionalisation too far.
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