the ideal bookshelf

If you're anything like me, when you visit someone's home for the first time, you just can't resist taking a look at their bookshelves. There's something about people's book collections that's incredibly personal and revealing, which is exactly what artist Jane Mount aims to capture in her project Ideal Bookshelves. In this series of artworks, Jane paints sets of individuals' favourite books in her own unique take on portraiture.

Some of the sets are themed according to her subjects' particular likes (picture books, cookery books, gardening books, art books, or even a complete set of Harry Potters) but my favourites are the ones that, like my own bookshelves, muddle lots of very different books together in a pleasingly idiosyncractic selection, so the Hardy Boys can sit alongside Nietzsche (yes, really) and Steven Hawking with Dr Seuss.





















You can see more examples at the Ideal Bookshelf blog, or on Etsy: Jane also paints 'ideal bookshelves' on commission.

Of course, all this has got me thinking about which books I would choose to be on my own ideal bookshelf. A very tricky decision... which books would you choose?

3 comments:

12 November 2010 at 19:59 Lauren Hudson said...

hey your blog is amazing!
not sure if you've heard of her, but as soon as i saw your post i thought of Kathryn Faulkner and her work of top 20 books

http://www.kathrynfaulkner.com/archive/top20books/index.html

she asked a group of people to pick out their favourite 20 books and arrange them, she then photographed them.

i hope this some how helps

Lauren

13 November 2010 at 15:32 Katherine Woodfine said...

Hi Lauren,

Really glad to hear you like the blog!

I hadn't heard of Kathryn Faulkner's work before but it's lovely - thanks for the tip!

Katherine

12 October 2015 at 09:03 hou said...

she asked a group of people to pick out their favourite 20 books and arrange them, she then photographed them.

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