CHENNAI: Books are many things to many people, and among these things is their use as purely decorative items. Their placement in a home can signify erudition, even if they were bought not from a bookstore but from a prop boutique. Such forms of display sometimes irritate readers.
For instance: colour-coded shelves, or shelves on which the books are all positioned page-forward, spine concealed. I find the second absurd; the first, though, I have to admit I find attractive. My own shelves have no logic because they are functional: they need to fit into them all the books I currently own.
Now, a new design trend incorporating books has captured the attention of tastemakers. Unlike the ones already discussed, “bookshelf wealth” celebrates organic, authentic, disarrayed style. The aesthetic incorporates not only books, but also other items that take up space on those shelves. It is essentially about one’s personality, as expressed through a personal collection of literature and knick-knacks like art and accent pieces.
For many readers like myself who are privileged to have our own mini-libraries, our bookshelf wealth is less by design and more by sheer accumulation and accident. Took some bangles off one day and placed them atop a rack? There they stay, coloured glass catching the light. Have a tiny linocut print that’s better off the wall?
There the frame leans against the spines of an assorted stack. A table runner given as a present, but no use for it in a home that doesn’t really have that kind of table? Perfect to add some textile and pattern, draping the plain wooden sides of the bookshelf. As for the books themselves: let them multiply — that goes without saying.
My “bookshelf wealth” is certainly not by design, although a vast number of factors played into it. Sometimes I look at my books and I am grateful I still have them, because I almost let them go during a period of upheaval. I remember other books that were lost in this manner at different stages of my life. I also remember how irritated with myself I was when I last packed them — why does any person need so many books?! I smile thinking of the pleasure that reading friends have had exploring them, and how happy I was to share my books, some untouched for years, some never actually read, with those who visited.
Now that this natural gathering of objects has been identified as fashionable, there will of course be many attempts to render bookshelf wealth purely for aesthetic value. But as designer Elizabeth Krueger quoted in Homes & Gardens about this trend says, “You can always tell when the pieces have been discovered during the different seasons and moments of life. There is an inherent character and narrative that cannot be fabricated.”
Happenstance is the key to true bookshelf wealth, then, which means that there’s something cunningly charming about this trend: it means that the only people who can truly achieve it already have it. The rest have simply been given social media sanction to try less, and thrive more — to appreciate the eclecticism they may already possess, and let it grow.