A room without books, says Los Angeles interior designer Peter Dunham, is "a tragedy. It feels unfinished, like there is no intellectual presence."
In a city derided for its cerebral shortcomings, the home library -- once merely a quaint signature of old money -- is asserting itself as a showcase for personal taste, designers say. Los Angeles houses may balloon with gadget-laden spa baths, elaborate outdoor kitchens and high-tech media lounges, but it's the humble bookcase-lined reading room that's becoming a symbol of respite and refinement.
It's a trend propelled by novel ideas in the marketplace. An Umbra bookshelf called Conceal, which supports a vertical stack of titles so they seem to levitate above the floor, has sold nearly 200,000 units. Based on that success, the firm recently premiered a similar system for displaying books horizontally called the Flybrary.
Berkeley artist Jim Rosenau creates shelves made of books instead of wood, with intriguing and humorous messages delivered on the spines. One bookshelf is constructed of "Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty?" and "All the Kings Men," both supported by a wedge of "Anatomy of a Murder" -- pierced by an egg whisk.
"They still convey stories in your mind even if you are just reading the titles," says Rosenau, who sells his work at the Gallery of Functional Art in Santa Monica and through www.thisintothat.com.
In an age of tabloids and celebrity scandal blogs, books signify wit and learnedness -- or at least the pretense of them.
New York designer Harry Allen uses the embellished hard covers of antique books as a facade on the cast-resin blocks that make up his faux Bookshelf, which sells for $180 at local design stores such as Show in Los Feliz.
Even when the fakes couldn't look less like a book, they still exude a scholarly gravitas. Just look at the porcelain volumes from KleinReid and carved wooden books designed to match old vellum-bound volumes from Voila! gallery in Los Angeles. Designer Kelly Wearstler's collection of accessories for Bergdorf Goodman in New York includes a stack of old tomes with untrimmed pages, all carved from black, gray and white marble.
The wall-covering firm Starck offers Library, a 3-foot-wide hand-painted mural that resembles shelves of books in an arched case, and the Eagle Rock design studio Bughouse produces "Radical Chic," a silk-screened graphic for your wall depicting the photographic image of provocative political tracts lined up on a shelf. Shoppers can even find inexpensive room dividers such as the Silverton (available at www.netshops.com) that are painted to resemble rows of bookshelves.
