Private Library

Private Library
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Edition English 中文 (Chinese) 日本語 (Japanese)
Edition English 中文 (Chinese) 日本語 (Japanese)
Copyright © 2022 Dow Jones & Company , Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Edition English 中文 (Chinese) 日本語 (Japanese)
Copyright © 2022 Dow Jones & Company , Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by
our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact
Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/private-libraries-that-inspire-11556209156
Forget the Dewey Decimal System: Entrepreneur and inventor Jay Walker’s 25,000 books, manuscripts, artifacts and objects are organized in his personal 3,600-square-foot library “randomly, by color and height,” he said. When he walks into his library, part of his Ridgefield, Conn., home, the room automatically “wakes up,” glowing with theatrical lighting, music and LED-lit glass panels lining various walkways. He finds items to peruse by a system of memory, chance, and inspiration, he said.
The Walker Library of the History of the Human Imagination is a dramatic example of the rarest of residential amenities: A vast, personal, custom-built repository of intellectual stimuli. In the age of the e-reader, it is a status symbol on par with wearing a Patek Philippe watch when the cellphone already tells the time. For wealthy homeowners, personal libraries provide both a quiet refuge from the world and a playground for their minds—as well as a solution to the challenge of warehousing books from which they cannot bear to part.
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Copyright © 2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by
our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact
Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.

Here at Flavorpill, we can’t really get enough of gazing lovingly at photographs of books. We know it’s what’s inside that counts, but one simple fact just can’t be avoided: books are beautiful, and they sure do warm up a room — or, in some cases, an entire building. Plus, at the risk of being totally sentimental, we think that the best books are often the most beautiful: even if their spines are shabby, the exude a kind of well-loved glow, beautiful from the inside out. We’ve taken a look at gorgeous bookstores and amazing college libraries , so we thought it was time to bring you a little inspiration for the home library — though we admit, not too many of these designs would fit in our own NYC apartments. Click through to check out our collection of beautiful private and personal libraries from all over the world, and let us know if you think your own collection should be on this list in the comments!
American entrepreneur Jay Walker’s private library — so important (and massive) that his house was designed and built around it. [ via ]
An idyllic private library in a home designed by Gianni Botsford, Cahuita, Costa Rica [ via ]
Miquel Mateu’s library at the castle of Peralada, Spain. [ via ]
Karl Lagerfeld’s home library [ via ]
Home library designed by Atelier Bow-Wow, Tokyo, Japan [ via ]
George Lucas’s library at Skywalker Ranch, a company retreat in Marin County, California. [ via ]
The sun-soaked library in a home remodeled from an old factory in Belgium. [ via ]
A private library designed by Thierry W. Despont, Toronto, Canada. [ via ]
Private library designed by architecture firm Ilai, photography by Lukas Wassmann. [ via ]
The Scholar’s Library, designed by Peter Gluck and Partners, Olivebridge, United States [ via ]
The innovative staircase library, designed by Levitate Architects, London. [ via ]
Donald Judd’s minimalist library, Marfa, Texas. [ via ]
The Brain, a filmmaker’s library and studio, Seattle [ via ]
The updated library in a 17th-century London townhouse, designed by Timothy Hatton. [ via ]
Part of Alberto Manguel’s private library, “a fantastic animal made up of the several libraries built and then abandoned, over and over again, throughout my life.” South of the Loire Valley, France. [ via ]
A private library designed by Lea Ciavarra and Anne Marie Lubrano, of Lubrano Ciavarra Architects, on Harbour Island in the Bahamas. [ via ]
A gorgeous view in a California home designed by Sally Sirkin Lewis. [ via ]
The modern library in Villa Dali, near The Hague in The Netherlands. [ via ]
A double level home library in a loft in Paris, France. [ via ]

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After several delays due to supply chain issues, Oak Knoll is pleased to announce the arrival of the third printing of The Private Library ! Thank you to all of our customers who pre-ordered a copy for your patience as we anxiously awaited its delivery. All pre-orders have been shipped.
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Featured in The New York Times , alongside an interview with author Reid Byers, in the article "How Many Books Does It Take to Make a Place Feel Like Home?"
"... a profusely illustrated, detail-crammed, Latin-strewn and yet remarkably unstuffy book ... goes to the heart of why physical books continue to beguile us."
- Julie Lasky, The New York Times

The Private Library has been listed on The Washington Post 's 2021 list of "50 notable works of nonfiction"
"Beautifully designed, Byers' 500-page masterwork lays out how cultures from antiquity to the present created welcoming, comfortable spaces to house books."
- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

"... Byerss book is a worthy tribute to bibliomanes and the spaces they inhabit."
- Benjamin Riley, The New Criterion

"In short, this volume addresses the private library as thoroughly as possible. The study of the private library has been greatly enhanced here by the abundant illustrations, charts, and graphs..."
- Barbara Hebard, The Guild of BookWorkers Newsletter , Number 260, February 2022

"If you dream of building a library in a private house, buy this unusual book... For the bibliophile there is on practically every page something to learn, something to delight and something to amuse."
-Charles Spicer, The Book Collector (Winter 2021 Issue)

"Excavating deeply into design history, and the ways the past is continuously reinterpreted, can suggest paths to fresh ideas . . . writer and bibliophile Reid Byers has pored through centuries of evolving concepts. . . ."
-Eve Kahn, New York Times in the article Design Books That Mine the Exotic: Five new titles burrow into designs past to reveal a universe that is both perfumed and colorful.

"...beautifully produced and illustrated... a fascinating and eclectic, in the author's words, 'compendious disquisition'."
- Colin Steele, Journal of the Book Collectors' Society of Australia (412th Issue, December 2021)

"...hefty, fully illustrated, and beautifully designed volume..."
-Rebecca Rego Barry, Fine Books & Collection , Summer 2021

"This beautifully produced book is designed for any general reader who wants to read a bibliocentric history of the world... After a page or two... you are hanging on [Byers's] every word...."
-A.N. Wilson, TLS

"...well-designed, with a 10×7-inch page size, one of the books great strengths is the copious illustrations in colour and the excellent diagrams, tables and plans.... this stimulating book contains a huge amount of thought-provoking information about a perennially fascinating subject..."
- Murray Simpson, Library & Information History

"...a major work of biblio-scholarship from Oak Knoll Press...Beautifully designed, Byers's 500-page masterwork lays out how cultures from antiquity to the present, from East to West, created welcoming, comfortable spaces to house books."
-Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

_____________________________________________________

"The nuts and bolts of private libraries through the centuries is a worthwhile line of cultural inquiry, one that is plumbed thoroughly-and with a flair for context and narrative-by Reid Byers in this lively overview. Layout, design and accouterments of "domestic bookrooms," as he calls them, are just one component of his engaging examination, making for an excellent addition to the genre. Highly recommended."
- Nicholas A. Basbanes , NEH Public Scholar and author of A Gentle Madness

"A fascinating as well as extremely useful and well-documented study of the history of library design and architecture in all its aspects. Byers places the private library in relation to the individuals and everyday life, as well as the institutional libraries of each age. To my knowledge, this is a unique reference book, dealing with the architecture and layout of the private library from earliest times to the present day. I believe it must become a companion to all book and library historians, as well as scholars of humanistic disciplines overall. "
- Konstantinos Sp. Staikos , architect and author of The History of the Library in Western Civilization

First edition, third printing with corrections.

The Private Library is the domestic bookroom: that quiet, book-wrapt space that guarantees its owner that there is at least one place in the world where it is possible to be happy. The story of its architecture extends back almost to the beginning of history and forward toward a future that is in equal parts amazing and alarming.

In this book, Mr. Byers examines with a sardonic eye the historical influences that have shaped the architecture of the private library, and the furnishings, amenities, and delightful anachronisms that make the mortal room into what Borges so famously called Paradise.

Reid Byers is a longtime celebrant of the private library. He has been a Presbyterian minister, a C language programmer, and a Master IT Architect with IBM. The writing of this book, a procès de longue durée , has itself extended through part of the history it describes and has been equally divided between Princeton, New Jersey, and the Blue Mountains of Maine.

_____________________________________________________

Read an interview with author Reid Byers on Oak Knoll's Biblio-Blog: https://oakknollbooks.wordpress.com/2021/04/29/q-a-with-reid-byers-author-of-the-private-library/

Watch author Reid Byers speak on The Private Library to The Grolier Club, from September 20, 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vSmJFX0OrA&t=726s.

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Complete with wall-length windows, this library lives below a lofted hangout space inside a private studio in Seattle, Washington. The owner can slide down from the loft to the library using a built-in gold pole.

Located in inventor Jay Walker's home in Ridgefield, Connecticut, this 3,600-square-foot library features multiple staircases and over 30,000 books, maps, charts, and pieces of artwork.

Designed by Gianni Botsford Architects in Costa Rica, this private backyard library has its own entrance and deck leading out from the main house.

Famous fashion designer and icon Karl Lagerfeld stacks his books horizontally in his floor-to-ceiling home library. Located in Paris, the library looks like it's turned on its side.

The "Skywalker Ranch" — film producer George Lucas' private retreat — houses a research library with a magnificent glass ceiling dome in Nicasio, California. Though the ranch is not open to the public, filmmakers can make an appointment to visit.

The architects from design firm Ilai created this beautiful library for a private home in Zurich, Switzerland. It includes a small window near the armchair, so that when the owners look up from a book, they can peer out into their yard.

The books in this London library are hidden in a wooden staircase, which leads up to a lofted bedroom. Levitate Architects designed the library as a solution to the residents' book-storage problem (the staircase can hold about 2,000 volumes).

The home library inside this $18 million Manhattan townhouse, which serves as a three-unit co-op, stretches two flights. When it was built in the 1930s, it was home to the Hans Hoffman Art School.

Richard Macksey, a professor and director of the humanities department at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, owns a home library with over 70,000 books and manuscripts. It's one of the largest private collections in Maryland.

Inspired by the process of creating the 30,000-volume library for his 15th century home in Loire, France, writer Alberto Manguel wrote an entire book pondering the meaning of libraries, called "The Library at Night."

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For the most diehard bibliophiles, sometimes it's not enough to simply visit the local public library. They must have their own.
They design their homes with magnificent home libraries, so that every time they finish a book, they can add it to their floor-to-ceiling collection.
We've rounded up some of the most incredible and expansive home libraries, including those owned by filmmaker George Lucas and designer Karl Lagerfeld.
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