Furniture Reporter

How far the bookcase has come. These illustrations show typical bookcase styles from 1826. It would be too cruel to compare them with the standard fair of today’s Argos or Ikea, wouldn’t it?

The bookcase has been around as long as it was necessary to store books. As a domestic piece of furniture it probably had its heyday in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, when it was considered an essential piece of furniture.

Books were perceived as precious and valuable items, particularly when they were hand-printed with hand produced leather bindings. The size of many bookcases seemed to reflect the status and presence that a good book collection could have.

Many bookcase were more like cabinets with lockable glass doors. This was for the practical reason of keeping harmful dust and dirt from damaging the books, but also to keep thieving hands from book collections. Many servants might not have been able to read, but they were more than aware of the value of books on the open market.

Not that all book collections were valued by their owners. It was a common occurrence when setting up house to buy books by the yard in order to fill a library. It was often immaterial as to the subjects, as long as the bindings looked decorative.

It is often a mistake to think that because a country or town house had a large library, that those books were read, and read often. You can only wonder how many homes had books that would crack when opened, showing that they had never left the shelf since they were first placed there.

It seems hard for us to think that the privilege of being able to read in an age of large scale illiteracy, could be treated so casually and so dismissively, when so much of the population had no opportunity or access to education.

At one time reading was thought by many, to be an anti-social pursuit, selfish even. Books were all very well decorating a bookcase, but you wouldn’t want your head stuck in one, would you?