Bookish Beauties

I love old books, and the daughter-of-an-unofficial-interior-designer side of me especially loves old book covers.  The subtle way they stand on a bookshelf, quiet, but still warmly alluring.  Those muted colors, whether product of age or original design, seem to harmonize well even when mixed and matched on a shelf.  There might be glittery elements, embossed designs or shining author names, but the generally restrained use of bling, often on top of a single-color bookcloth, means that the overall effect is elegant, not uncouth or visually abrasive.

And you can find these beauties for free! Sometimes.

Here are lovely designs from a few of the freestyle books that I’ve found.

The Garden of a Commuter's Wife.  Although I haven't read this book, the repetition of slightly varied flowers makes me wonder if the design was inspired by the monotonous repetition of a daily commute. Seemingly the same, but with slight variations flavoring the day to day experience.

On this copy of War and Peace, the material that makes up the cover is not much more than cardboard, but the swirly symmetrical gold design caught my eye and I had to take it home.

The bookcloth on this partial set of works by the Bronte sisters has faded to green along the spines, but the front and back covers are still a rich dark blue.  The ornamented gold squares along the spines form a lovely grid, an ordered counterpoint to the intense whirlwinds of emotions described within the stories. I confess, I've only read Jane Eyre...

If the entire book cover is interesting it can be a difficult choice to when deciding whether to display the spines or the front cover.  This choice is sometimes dictated by space limitations alone.  I did come across this blog post titled 'How to Stack 7 books 7 different ways'  which gives examples of, well, obviously, different ways to stack books, but I'm sure there are more options out there. 

Freestyle book display suggestions welcome!

Fhutonix, part 2, Armful of books

In my practice of saving things before I know their future use, the arms of ye olde wooden frame futon were saved on the porch. This is despite their irregular shape and resistance to full dis-assembly along with the rest of the futon frame (explained here).  There they stayed, tucked behind a card table and other porch detritus until Creative Roommate got on a cleaning kick and saw a clever way to expand our book storage capacity.  Let me explain how it happened.
The apartment has a rather creatively configured shelving space in the living room. At one point in the history of this building it must have been involved in doorway activities, but is now sealed up with some ridges for removable shelving having been added.  There is a large space at the bottom that has served as random storage for packing boxes, box fans, and other oddly-shaped boxy things. Convenient, but not decorative.
Until it became this.....

Our lovely additional book shelf

 The clever solution hit upon by Creative Roommate was to use both futon arm/end-pieces, but space them so that the depth matches the above shelves.

No one can see that there is a gap in the middle.

The futon parts and wooden floor below have a similar stain, so they almost blend together for an interesting effect.  A lucky coincidence for this freestyle project.

The books will be re-arranged as part of a book shelf makeover, watch for that project in a future post.