"At the present day a library has become as necessary an appendage to a house as a hot and cold bath" wrote the Roman Stoic Seneca at some point in the first century CE, "I would excuse them straightway if they really were carried away by an excessive zeal for literature; but as it is, these costly works of sacred genius, with all the illustrations that adorn them, are merely bought for display and to serve as wall-furniture."1
And today?
While the glossy coffee table book may be have become an increasingly popular, and commercially successful, use of books as idle representation, we'd be interested to know how many individuals in the past months have deliberately positioned themselves in front of a carefully reorganised bookcase for work video conferences, or how many politicians have ensured that an appropriately stocked bookcase serves as the background for their video interview?
For, and despite the, alleged, reduction in the relevance and importance of the printed word in contemporary society, the bookcase remains, in contrast to the bath, not only a near ubiquitous piece of domestic furniture, but a strongly symbolic object.......
Although in many regards little more than shelving, the singular on the bookcase is that which sits on/in it.
Books.
A specialisation of function that has not only enabled the bookcase to develop such a wide and varied symbolic and figurative existence, nor only been responsible for the establishment of the bookcase as a universally recognised subgenre of the shelf, but a specialisation that has been key to the development and evolution of the bookcase ever since the establishment of the first libraries. And even ere the first books existed: the earliest known libraries such as that in Ebla in Syria, the Assyrian Royal Library of Ashurbanipal or the Library of Alexandria, Egypt, housing texts on papyrus scrolls or clay tablets. Which reminds us that we've been scrolling through texts and reading tablets for most of human civilisation. And also reminding all Europeans and Americans, that no, you're not the centre of human civilisation.
And a specialisation that means whereas Seneca may have known "individuals with bookcases of ivory and citrus wood" and have experienced "book-shelves reaching right up to the ceiling",2 the principle (hi)story of the development of the bookcase is inextricably linked with the development of printing, and for all with the development of publishing: the wide-scale supply of and demand for books leading to a wide-scale supply of and demand for the bookcase.
Or the bochord, as they are referred to in John Kersey's 1708 Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum.3 A name which also helps explain the etymology of "book", namely from the Old English boc, or beech: earlier civilisations writing by engraving into beech wood tablets. Similarly in German one has Buch (book) and Buche (beech). And which also indicates from which material a bookcase should, perhaps, ideally be crafted.
While many an early bochord would invariably have been an inbuilt feature of a room, an architectural feature, certainly in the homes of nobility, in universities or government institutions, in the course of the 17th century the first free-standing objects were developed, of which one of the first, certainly one of the earliest widespread, was the so-called Bureau Bookcase or Desk & Bookcase; a, as the name implies, writing desk atop of which stands shelving for books. And thus an object, one presumes, aimed at a wealthier clientele who had established a small private library, but not one large enough to justify a separate bochord.
The 17th century also saw the development of objects more directly related to our contemporary free-standing bookcases, London's V&A Museum, for example, have in their collection a so-called Dyrham Bookcase from ca 1695, a work inspired by the bookcases in Samuel Pepys' late-17th century library, and which features height-adjustable shelving; as long as we've had books we've had books of differing sizes, and a need for responsive bookcases.
Once established there was no stopping the rise of the free-standing bookcase, not least because the developing publishing industry of the 18th century created a natural demand; and thus it is little surprise that the furniture pattern and sample books which emerged in the course of the 18th century, for example, Thomas Chippendale's famed 1754 The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director or Batty Langley's less famed but no less interesting, 1741 The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, feature collections of free-standing bookcases. Generally with doors, the door-free bookcase being, in many regards, a more contemporary development associated with prevailing tastes, but for all reflective of improvements in the heating, cleaning and ventilating of buildings. And of paper, ink and bookbinding. We need no longer protect books from the vagaries of the environment in which they stand.
Langley's works in addition helping underscore the strong connections between architecture and furniture design: not only do they all look as if they could just as easily be buildings in ancient Athens or Rome as domestic bookcases, but the names of three of them attest to their formal and constructive characteristics, Tuscan Book Case, Dorick Book Case and Ionick Book Case.4 We are unsure as to the reason for Batty Langley's overlooking of the Corinthian order, can only imagine it was too ornate for Georgian England. Or his personal predilection to the Gothic.
And indeed prevailing formal, aesthetic considerations, prevailing social conventions, prevailing understandings of the form function dependency, prevailing material and technical possibilities, prevailing economic realities, prevailing interpretations of the discourse between objects and the space they stand in, but for all prevailing relationships to and understandings of the book, were to be the principle driving factors in the further development of the bookcase from the 18th century until today. And unquestionably will so be into the future.
Such is however, as so oft, a Euro-centric approach to the (hi)story of furniture design. Yet as noted above, the first literature arose elsewhere, the first libraries were located elsewhere and thus, logically the first bookcases. And while we can, regrettably, find no reliable sources on the development of the bookcase in the contemporary Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, etc, in China one finds in the sixth century CE a revolving bookcase developed by one Fu Hhi/Fu Hsi.5 Or more accurately a construction featuring eight bookcases formed to an octagon on a central pillar around which they could be rotated, and within which was housed the complete Buddhist canon; Fu Hhi/Fu Hsi's logic being that turning the bookcase through a complete revolution was equivalent to reading the Tripitaka contained within. An alternative take on the Chinese Revolution, and one which caught on and saw the octagonal revolving bookcase become an established feature in Buddhist temples across the contemporary China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc.... And thus a very nice example of a spreading religion spreading more than spiritual instruction, and very naturally posing the question of the relationship to the Buddhist prayer wheel. As L. Carrington Goodrich notes, it is not inconceivable that the rotating bookcase came first, and for us the step is a very satisfying one, however "it is a point requiring further study."6
Similarly requiring further study is the question of the revolving bookcase's influence outwith the domains of Asian Buddhism, Goodrich tending against there being such, considering a wider influence "possible but not probable" and that "the revolving library would not therefore seem to be an instance in which China has fertilized the occident".7 And while in no position to argue with an L. Carrington Goodrich, we'd throw into the ring for discussion the revolving bookstands that appeared, as if from nowhere, in Europe in the course of the 18th century, and thus a period fascinated with Chinese art, decoration, culture, furniture. Realised in small table top and larger floor versions, one of the more popular incarnations of the revolving bookstand is unquestionably that quadratic object with slats of wood by way of walls, and objects within which the Encyclopaedia Britannica supplied several of its 19th and 20th century editions, books and bookcase in one package, and that "for the convenience of purchasers who have not sufficient shelf-room."8
And thus not only bookcases which through a complete revolution could impart as much knowledge as Fu Hhi/Fu Hsi's bookcase could impart wisdom, but also a charming, contemporary, object in which to present one's newly acquired encyclopedias, to confirm one's status as a cultured person of learning, one's interest in and value placed upon education, science and the arts.
Seneca would only have been surprised by the reserved and modest form of the bookcase.
To accompany your thoughts on the public statements made by your own bookcase, and your questioning of why you didn't think to reorganise it before that video conference, a Radio smow playlist featuring reflections on the wider social, cultural associations of our bookcases......
Unaccustomed, and unwilling, as we are to contradicting Fugazi, "Furniture has no say in life" .......?
Or perhaps better put.
???
For all we may consider furniture passive, furniture actively contributes to the functioning of both the individual and the masses, enables not only domestic processes but those process of civic society such as education, commerce, government, etc, etc,etc. Not least because, on account of the nature of the evolution undertaken by furniture in the course of the development and evolution of the individual and society, furniture has increasingly, and ever more complexly, assimilated the needs and demands of the individual and society into the very fabric of its being, has evolved with us, and in doing so has moved from being a simple aid in life, to an informed, active, equal, partner.
Although we do accept that through challenging the validity of the statement, we somewhat destroy the very nice metaphor Fugazi were seeking to develop, "Furniture has no say in life, It was made to be used by people"; as are the oppressed, voiceless, working masses of the capitalist system that relies on them, and ensures they are produced in ever greater numbers to guarantee its own survival, but won't share its wealth them.
A metaphor which in any case only works if you read "use" as "abuse" rather "use" as "utilise", and the worst abuse of furniture being that at the hands of the unprincipled furniture designer seeking to create an object aligning with a preconceived formal concept rather than as an honest response to a question. In contrast furniture is rarely abused by end users, tending instead to be valued and respected. It's a nice metaphor, but fragile.
Much more robust are the lines which follow it,
How many times have you felt like a bookcase, Sitting in a living room gathering dust, Full of thoughts already written?
A repository of knowledge, information, emotion and inspiration that is maintained but not actively used. Far less added to. And that, largely, because we tend to see our bookcases as static spaces in which books are stored; yet we should understand them as dynamic, animated, ever evolving, spaces, the words, the thoughts, the arguments, positions, documentation, contained within books aren't the end of something, but tools with which to forge a way forward.
And if we use them as such our bookcases will, and with all respect to Fugazi, have a lot to say in our lives.....
In the crafting of a sentence or a lyric there is a very, very, fine line between articulacy and pretension, and we've never been able to decide on which side of the line to place Lloyd Cole's
Lean over on the bookcase, If you really want to get straight, Read Norman Mailer, Or get a new tailor
Or more accurately, the "Read Norman Mailer, Or get a new tailor" couplet, and its implication that a road to personal advancement is to become more macho, an implication amplified by the idea that somehow the clothes make the man, and a message which doesn't fit with the world view we pick up elsewhere on the album. Or indeed in any understanding of society to which a majority would freely subscribe. And thus stands there incongruously, ungainly, indecipherably. Also because Norman Mailer's life was at best chaotic. Hardly exemplary. But maybe we're missing something. Maybe we need to read more Norman Mailer. Maybe it is just because of the rhyme. Maybe Camera Obscura know, they certainly announced themselves ready to be heartbroken by Lloyd. Or maybe as Lloyd Cole ruminates at the end of Perfect Skin, "the moral of this song must be there never has been one."
Not that such discussions should in any way detract from the sheer joy that is the album Rattlesnakes from which it is taken, a work that has lost nothing over the past 36 years.
Nor has the first part of the quartet lost anything of its joy, or urgency, unequivocalness, articulacy, "Lean over on the bookcase, If you really want to get straight".
If your choice is Norman Mailer is up to you, he's certainly got a very varied canon.
Arguably, and without being able to offer any evidence, when bookcases were bochords they contained alone books, texts and written works. And we'd imagine the shelves of most all Bureau Bookcases knew nothing but books. Then overtime bookcases began to become repositories for other things, ornaments, photo frames, cacti, piggy banks, or, and in the case of Element of Crime's narrator's amour, glasses. Even if the narrator's thirst appears to be for something else.
And considerations - on the glasses not on the thirst - which allow one to understand that for all the very specific functionality, the unique raison d'etre of the bookcase, the manner in which the bookcase has established itself in our lives, the place in our lives we freely and gladly give the bookcase, has bequeathed it a licence and a freedom to break from the constraints of tradition, to consciously evolve, and become a responsive member of our households, yet without ever losing sight of, or weakening its bond to, its unique raison d'etre.
"In this bookcase full of stories, You find some of them are true"
Which is what differentiates a bookcase from life. We are exposed to as many fictions by life as we are to by our bookcases, yet whereas the fictions life brings forth are all too often mistakingly taken for irrefutable truths and tend thereby to, when not always restrict, then certainly to predispose our actions, our thoughts, our field of vision, our understandings, et al, the fictions our bookcases bring forth are understood as fictions.
And for all are understood as alternative worlds, alternative understandings, alternative voices, alternative realities, and thus our bookcases can help us develop a more probable relationship to life not through providing explanations of life but through providing space in which to question and re-imagine that which we until then have accepted as truth, as life, but in all probability is a fiction, and thereby allowing us to construct a new narrative.......
Not a word of a lie, we were recently busy with a book, and in an old black and white photo saw a chair that interested us, but which was very small and a little out of focus. And not a word of lie, we touched the photo with thumb and index finger and tried to enlarge it and so get a better view. Honest!
Reading has changed little, how one reads has changed fundamentally. And while no-one would openly challenge either Eko Fresh's assertion that we shouldn't feign a bookcase allergy nor his argument that we should read more books, it is valid, necessary, to question his insistence that books are paper objects. Must they be.........?
For while there is a lot to said in favour of analogue reading, not least that it gets us away from our monitors and screens, and allows us to live independent of plugs, digital reading does mean a lot less printing with the associated savings in resources; means a lot less transport and distribution, with the associated saving resources; means a lot less physical bookshops, with the associated savings in resources. And also a lot less bookcases. Or at least a lot less physical bookcases.
But what does that mean. No bookcase. Are we happy with that? Is that a future we want to move towards? It's certainly a logical progression in the (hi)story of an item of furniture so closely associated with the development of publishing, when publishing goes virtual so should, must, our bookcases, anything else would be absurd, but....... No bookcase?!?!?!?
1Seneca, Minor dialogues, together with the dialogue on clemency. Translated by Aubrey Stewart, Bohn's Classical Library, G Bell, London, 1889, page 271
2ibid page 270-271
3John Kersey, Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum; Or, A General English Dictionary, London, 1708
4Batty Langley, The city and country builder's and workman's treasury of designs, London 1741, Plates CLVII - CLXIV
5As so oft with such ancient objects, the exact date and location of invention, and by whom, are unclear. See L. Carrington Goodrich, The Revolving Book-Case in China, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1942 pages 130-161
6ibid page 154ff
7ibid page 161
8The Bulletin, Sydney, New South Wales, Vol. 21, No. 1074, (15th September 1900) Available via https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-662103340/view?sectionId=nla.obj-676439853&partId=nla.obj-662148645#page/n28/mode/1up (accessed 09.08.2020)
The Radio smow Bookcase Playlist, and all Radio smow playlists can be found on the smowonline Spotify page.
