The design-conscious homeowners filling their shelves with books they'll never open
By Suzanne MunshowerIt's not the plot that some people like best about books: it's the cover. Or, to be precise, the spine. Books by the yard - the buying and selling of books in bulk for decorative use - is a hot commodity. The New York Times may have overstated it last year by announcing: "The printed, bound book has been given a stay of execution by an unlikely source: the design community," but 'book solutions' to decorating challenges is trending.
Some like it haute, and London's Classic Rare Books delivers the highest quality. Its finest range of leather-bound antique books starts at £500/ft (€2,000/m) and includes sets and rare first editions, which can be chosen by subject, colour or language. Classic Rare Books is not for all budgets, though; besides decorative offerings, it purveys to collectors such heady jewels as a Moroccan-leather-bound first-edition set of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy for £14,400 (€17,640).
Mark Ghahramani, manager of the company's 'by the yard' department, says that while the store has furnished whole libraries, customers are more likely to use a metre or two of rare books to draw attention to a shelf or bookcase. To fill more space, they'll order some lesser-priced leather-bound books - costing £100/ft (€400/m) - which won't be in English as the upper range is. Why books? "Books are comforting," explains Ghahramani.
Less exalted fare, with a vast panoply of purchasing options, is to be found through Wonder Book - one of the largest used-book dealers in the US (with more than a million volumes on hand) - in its Books By The Foot division, where prices start at a modest $6.98 for 'Modern Cloth Hardbacks'.
It offers a wide variety of options - colour, subject, size or vintage - as well an 'instant library' service, putting together shelf-fillers to any specifications. For those longing to feel surrounded by beloved old family tomes, there's 'Fairly Distressed' or 'Very Distressed Vintage Leather'.
"Our 'Vintage Kids' are generally used for professional installations," says owner Chuck Roberts. "Our more modern kids' books go into children's photoshoots or real children's rooms."
Forget reading. More and more people just like that comforting look, so much so that architects such as Steve Hermann in Los Angeles cover the walls of spec homes they build with shelving. "But who has 4,000 books?" he asks rhetorically. He also decorates houses to show off their best features to potential buyers; the one with a capacity for 4,000 sold complete with books (2,000 white-wrapped editions in horizontal stacks) for $6.4m.
Wrapped books are a big thing. Books By The Foot once wrapped more than 28,000 in linen for a single job. The firm also supplies books to TV and film productions. "We're asked to cater selections to the characters' personalities. We have to read the writers' minds at times," says Roberts.
However, Classic Rare Books director Sasha Poklewski-Koziell says that mind-reading can go wrong. "The Italian manager of a famous English football club came into the shop to ask us to put a collection on sports together for him. We put together everything on hunting and shooting, and I told him how pleased I was that he was spending his money on a worthwhile collection and not throwing it away on trivia. As I walked outside the shop with him, to my horror I saw him get into a new Ferrari, smiling, as he told me he was interested in football, not hunting and shooting."
Poklewski-Koziell has always risen to challenges. When starting out, he pretended a friend's furniture store was his showroom, rushing over to fill up bookcases when a customer was coming to call. He once hand-delivered a rush order of 18 boxes of rare books valued at £400,000 to a mansion in St Moritz, speeding through the Alps only to be stopped at customs. After getting that settled, he drove on, but got stuck in the snow and needed a tow. Still, he managed to have the books in place an hour before the client's helicopter touched down.
In the US, Decorative Leather Books owner Darrell Lynn - who has more than 5,000 foreign 'decorator clients' in Saudi Arabia, Europe, Australia and South America - says about 70% of his buyers are residential, typically a married couple in their 30s with children. Books are the perfect décor item, he says. "They give a great feeling of warmth," he points out, "and it's a lot better than rows of Kindles on a shelf."
While its antique books aren't in English, many of Decorative Leather Books' re-bound offerings are. These include books sold by colour - Lynn recently sold $20,000 (€15,100) in white leather to a celebrity - as well as cowhide bindings printed with giraffe, leopard and zebra prints, and marbled parchment books.
Then there are 'Weathered Words', which, says Lynn, "we sell by the thousands". These come in two sizes, the smaller paperback 'Puddles' and the hardback 'Thunder Bundles'. Books are torn apart, individually bound without spines or boards, then tied in small bundles. Each then goes through a weathering process to make a design accent for a coffee table or shelf.
Books by yard can fit all budgets. The venerable Strand Bookstore in New York offers less expensive choices, including pre-selected mysteries, which range from just $10/ft to three times that amount. Strand also rents frequently, especially to Broadway productions and wedding planners.
While by-the-yard books used to focus on important-looking law or medical texts geared toward dressing for impressing, the new generation of bulk book-buyers are simply too busy to fill the shelves themselves and like the look. And for those put off by the thought of having to dust all those books? There are firms that sell faux book panels for attaching to cupboard doors. As one might imagine, these are frowned upon by those buying and selling the real thing - even if those real things are never read.
http://www.cnbcmagazine.com/story/reading-immaterial/1642/1/
