Pottery Barn vintage book bundles

FROM the Pottery Barn catalogue:

Avid readers know that a stack of books can be a comforting sight. We’ve taken authentic vintage books and turned them into art objects by removing their covers and binding them together in sets of four. Neutral in color with deckled and uneven pages, they bring relaxed style to a bookcase, mantel or side table.

• Approximately 8.5″ wide x 6″ deep x 4.5″ high
• Each bundle features four real books with covers removed so that they are all paper.
• Pages are glued shut and books are tied together with twine.
• Purely decorative; contents and titles are not important.

                              — Comments —

Kimberly writes:

How sad that looks! :- ) I feel sorry for those books almost. It reminds me of a basket of Communion Hosts; those books are forced to sacrifice all the life within!

Laura writes:

They are the ghosts of books past.

Laura adds:

The most interesting thing about the catalogue blurb is how it suddenly departs from purely physical description and scoldingly informs us that contents and titles are “not important” – as if this was an objective fact, similar to “pages are glued shut.”

I cannot imagine anyone who has ever enjoyed even one book buying a book bundle, or several book bundles at $39 each, and displaying them in a bowl. I’ve seen walls painted to look like they were shelves of books – they were infinitely superior as works of art to this. Even bad books are better thrown away than denuded, glued and “deckled,” and made into book bundles. Bad books are offensive and should be thrown away. I never keep a book that has no redeeming value. I have happily – and with a clear conscience – thrown out terrible books. Huge bonfires lit by burning books are preferable to book bundles because at least the former is an act of acknowledged destruction.

As interior decorating, the book bundle strikes me as a desperate act by people who are strangers in their own homes and who are trying – with extreme ineptitude –  to disguise the fact that they have no interior life at all. It should be called “exterior decorating.”

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