revolver

often imitated in smaller, stripped down versions that lose the totemic power of the original, opinion ciatti’s massive "ptolomeo" was the tower bookcase that launched so many pretenders. The icon was recently reworked into a rotating version (above) that nicely updates an antique standard.

trucks

sick in bed last week, i kept bringing piles of books from the study to my bedside & found myself longing for a library style book truck. looking at these beauties from vernon and gaylord, i realized that their double-sided nature made them good candidates to go between two windows, with one of their narrow sides against the wall, as i mentioned with these shelves.

b-up

the white hotel is probably the coolest hotel in belgium. and cool goes clear through their philosophy. not only do they support belgian art & design by filling their hotel with it, they also let you take some of it home. well, buy some of it anyway. what would I want to take home? plenty, starting with the peyman nadirzadeh-designed b-up shelves, made by belgian manufacturer colect. they are slender, well-mannered, and original. wouldn't we all like to be?

case

second-hand ladderax units continue to pull in big money at auction, so i've often wondered why no-one has re-issued the simple, obviously desirable line. well, it looks like london-based case commissioned matthew hilton to do just that. only they claim it for their own as the casefile system.

ladders

the february issue of world of interiors carries a nice little feature on library ladders. among my favorites shown (for those of us without a rail for a rolling ladder) are these three. the putnam no. 70 (top) folds ingeniously from side to side for easy storage in a corner. the folding stepstool (middle) from summerill & bishop is simplicity itself. for a light, modern and affordable ladder, ikea's inreda ladder is tough to beat.

the 606

early on in this blog's history, i did a very small post about the dieter rams-designed 606 universal shelving system, but i've long felt the system deserved a bigger posting, so here it is. designed in 1960 with the help of neils vitsoe, professor rams' system is an incredibly beautiful bit of design thinking. when it was introduced it must must have looked shockingly clean and industrial. the main idea wasn't so new; pole and wall mounted shelving systems with optional cabinets and desks abounded in the '40s and '50s (omni, cado, ladderax, etc., etc.), but those systems were mostly made of wood, sometimes with gold accents. they were almost earthy in comparison to the white powder coated steel shelves and starkly silver hardware of the 606. rams' shelving was like a pure idea of storage come to life. it still is. it's difficult to imagine a system more stripped to its essence, but if material innovations make that possible, i feel certain that vitsoe will make it happen. they continue to work directly with dieter rams to make improvements to the system, keeping a design classic from becoming merely design history. in fact, the relationship between vitsoe and the 606 is so close that they seem one and same (the 606 is often referred to as "vitsoe shelving"). so why wont you find the above pictures on vitsoe's website? are they from moss's website (after all, they claim to be the "exclusive distributor of the 606 Universal Shelving System in North America")? no. because vitsoe, it just so happens, isn't the only one to make the 606. italian furniture company de padova also make the system, albeit only in aluminum. that means you can also buy the 606 from a de padova dealer, as well as from vitsoe themselves. no matter who you get it from, if you have the means to acquire a bit of this lovely stuff, you'll hold on to it. 606 shelving rarely pops up in the secondary market; a nice tribute to the design in its own right. (below: images from vitsoe's site)

corners

i have an aversion to corner cabinets. you know, those awkward pentagonal units meant to keep two rectangular cases from running into each other where walls meet. something about putting a rectangular row of rectangular objects into a triangle just bothers me. (i.e. books into a corner cabinet. this aversion also explains why you won't see round shelving on this blog.) i always advise people to run bookcases into each other at corners as shown above. i came across this lovely london home a few days ago on remodelista. this study is simple and beautiful, and the whole house is worth staring at for hours.