The Un-Read Book
April 28, 2011
THERE are many trashy books that do not deserve to be read. Still there’s something profoundly unsettling about the use of books for interior decorating.
Penelope Green in The New York Times reports:
Lisa Occhipinti is a fine artist with a background in bookbinding whose medium is orphaned books, mostly the linen-bound novels printed in the early to mid-20th century that you can find by the box load at thrift stores and flea markets.
She interferes with them by ripping off their spines and splaying the pages so they look like the whorls of a nautilus shell, and then coating the pages in beeswax. Her pieces can resemble fossils; haunted stacks of decayed, burned and water-soaked books; or crisp origami.
In an age when the bound book is an endangered species, her artwork is nicely topical. It’s also in the slipstream of the activities of set designers and store stylists who are throwing around what are known as “book bundles” — stitched and ripped old paperbacks in neutral colors — the way they used to set out green apples or lemons in a bowl. Which is to say, as a textural accent.
In between Ms. Occhipinti’s fine art and the decorating cliché of the book bundle (seen at West Elm and Pottery Barn this year, and Restoration Hardware last year) is the craft she practices, making functional objects like lamps and sewing boxes out of old books, selling them on Etsy (etsy.com/shop/theshophouse).
She now has a book of her own, “The Repurposed Library,” out this week from Stewart, Tabori & Chang. In it, she offers readers a how-to guide to making household objects from, well, books, like a mirror, a lamp and a fire screen, as well as the winsome mobile shown on the cover. [cont.]
— Comments —
Hurricane Betsy writes:
“Repurposed books” is decadentism for people with more money and time than brains or taste. Just another fad. Maybe if that silly cow would read some of those old books she would have less time to abuse them in order to impress girly interior designers.
