Designers aren’t ready to let bookcases go by wayside

Bookcases are in transition, just like the people who own them. The printed word no longer needs paper, and paper no longer needs stiffened linen or leather to contain it and be a book.

Rows of decorative spines with titles stamped in gold or black – those advertisements of a household’s taste and personality lined up in view – might actually start looking a bit too 20th century for people hurtling themselves into a paperless future.

Or not.

Current magazines still recommend buying hardbacks for almost nothing at garage sales to fill shelves to make a person seem well-read. As recently as March 2012, Dwight Garner, after taking a dig at the limitations of e-books in The New York Times, thought it relevant to quote bibliophile and novelist Anna Quindlen: “I would be most content if my children grew to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building bookshelves.”

And Benjamin Sundermeier, designer at Space Planning + Design in Kansas City, Mo., said his clients don’t seem motivated to “shift away from shelves” housing books.

In the books vs. bookless micro-controversy, books still have a lot of support. (In the eminently practical “Use What You Have Decorating” by Lauri Ward, books are treated as design accessories that deserve thoughtful, neat shelving that doesn’t mix in distractions like photos, art objects or gewgaws.)

Let’s say, however, that your attachment to some of your books (paperbacks of Jodi Picoult? First editions of Tom Clancy?) is starting to fade as you develop your love affair with your e-reader. Perhaps you’re trying to simplify or allot space to some of the other design accessories you have acquired. It’s hardly news that bookshelves are also the perfect venue to display collections of majolica, Blue Willow china or “Star Wars” action figures.

Shelving has always been about showing an owner’s personality through possessions, and there are many ways to do this without an assemblage of books.

Sundermeier has recently noticed a trend toward repurposing bookshelves for imaginative uses in the home. “We used antique bookshelves in a closet for shoes and sweaters and boxes,” he said of a recent design project.

Another client, he said, has an iron and wood bookshelf “displaying her collection of beautiful cookware and her kitchen TV.”

In another house, a Chinese pot rack has found its function as a place to stack books.

Sundermeier said these rough-hewn, individualized shelves are part of a direction in decor that puts special emphasis on having a home filled with one-of-a-kind items.

He noted that the influential High Point furniture market in North Carolina recently chose to report some of the findings of the British-based “Trend Bible”: a move toward interiors that don’t look “done,” that embrace imperfections and objects with a patina or well-loved wear.

It’s a reaction against the numbing sameness of all things digital. That can include bookshelves and what people choose to put in them. “I have a client with traditional bookcases who put her creamware collection in them in her living room,” he said.

Bookshelves can be hand-built relatively easily or purchased in the entire spectrum of markets, ranging from Home Depot lumber and Craigslist to high-end purveyors.

But it’s what you put in your bookshelves that’s important. If it’s literature, make sure you don’t “end up with scrappy books” that scream clutter, Sundermeier said.

If it’s anything else, make sure you keep your wonderful collections well dusted. Nothing evokes scary decrepitude faster than untended objects with cobwebs in the corner.