Alex Johnson's Blog

Many longstanding readers of Bookshelf have signed up to our RSS feed over the years and there is still a healthy number of you enjoying the posts this way. Sadly, the system we've been using for the last 14 years is now shutting down so we have hopped across to a new one. Hopefully it will be an easy hop, but please bear with us if we fall over and need to sort out which leg we're hopping from. And do get in touch if you have any queries or issues by emailing us at shedworking@gmail.com

"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."

nC2 Architecture

Mumokuteki Concept Bookstore, Beijing, by LUO Studio

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

Wei Huang/Bruce Tao

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

Tanishka Sharma

 

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.Heliconia

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.

Lenka Czereova

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. 

British Library