It seems there are a plethora of cat/book/bookcase images online, but doggy reading buddies are frequently left out. Never fear, here are some bookcases made to please four-footed friends and their less furry family members. In honor of National Dog Day, let’s create a special space for books and dogs.
Let’s start off with this fun series of bookshelves designed by NEL, “a collective of designers who join forces to explore, through concept and form, the interaction in design between traditional materials and techniques, and new processes or unusual applications.”
Image Courtesy of Nel
The pieces are made out of different materials using a variety of techniques.
Image Courtesy of Sakura Adachi
Japanese designer Sakura Adachi, created the Pet Cave bookcase to provide space for books, as well as a private nook for pets. It even comes with a comfy cushion!
Image Courtesy of Feebi’s Woodworking
Can’t leave Snoopy out of any doggy décor option. This custom bookcase by Feebi’s Woodworking was based on a drawing by an expectant mother who was doing the child’s room in a Snoopy theme. It mimics the famous Charles Shultz doghouse.
Unattributed Image Via Pinterest
Several designers have incorporated dog crates into larger bookcases, which might be a great option for book collectors with big dogs.
Unattributed Image Via Pinterest
If you decide to go with this option, remember to account for the growth of your puppy.
You may think you have read everything that could be said about the Ripper killings, but Sarah Pinborough presents a chilling tale of murder that stalks the streets of Victorian Era London simultaneously and with greater brutality. London police are baffled, is there one murderer responsible for all of the Whitechapel killings? Or is there a more horrifying possibility; are there two killers?
Image Courtesy of London Horror Tours
Scotland Yard detectives notice an appalling number of torsos are stacking up, and though they are in no way similar to the more widely known Ripper murders, they dare not believe they have more than one monster on their hands. Little do they know that the term monster may be apt, and many mutilated corpses will stack up before they solve the mystery.
Whitechapel London 1888
Highly regarded police surgeon Dr. Thomas Bond is called in to help solve the mystery of the carefully wrapped victim’s remains. Bond is fighting his own demons, however, and fallen deeply into opium addiction. Can he trust his own eyes, and follow the clues he uncovers, or is he only chasing visions inspired by his drug befuddled; sleep deprived mind?
Opium den during the Late Victorian Era. Wikispaces.
Pinborough has created a compulsive page turner featuring one of the most famous crimes in Western history, while morphing the traditional historic account into a paranormal thriller.
Since I’m a writer, I’m hardly going to agree with that popular saw, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” I’m also a photographer, though, and I’m aware that carefully crafted images can reveal stories much more quickly than words.
Image Courtesy of Tatsuya Tanaka. Rainy Days Never Stay Away.
Artist Tatsuya Tanaka skillfully creates micro worlds out of everyday objects. Familiar items like books, magazines and desk accessories become fantastic backgrounds for dramatic quests by tiny figures.
Image Courtesy of Tatsuya Tanaka. Slanting Rain.
Since 2011, Tatsuya Tanaka has worked on his miniature calendar, and shared his startling visions of a Lilliputian world daily.
He recently gave an interview with designboom magazine.
Image Courtesy of Tatsuya Tanaka. Dive.
DB: Are there particular themes or concepts that you are looking to express through this project?
TT: The theme is ‘the interest of likening one thing to another’. In doing so, you can see how everyday things can become more fun when imagined in a different way. It is important that the ‘miniature calendar’ is understandable in its intention for everyone – young and old, of any nationality. So, I try to use familiar things and address familiar matters.
Image Courtesy of Tatsuya Tanaka. Escalator.
DB: How do you go about generating ideas 365 days of the year for the calendar? Including titles for each piece?
TT: I often conceive ideas while working and carrying on with everyday life, so even though they are trivial matters when I conceive them, I am sure to make a note. I use the iPhone application ‘omnifocus’ which lets me quickly store my concepts. I sort these under categories like ‘practicable now’, ’necessary materials to put an idea into a practice’, ‘hints for ideas’ etc… and I decide what I will create next and what materials I will use by checking these memos.
Image Courtesy of Tatsuya Tanaka. Mountain Fold.
DB: What is the most challenging aspect of creating your calendar dioramas?
TT: Posting works every single day, in itself is my challenge. I have been doing this since April 20th, 2011 so the project is now in its fifth year. Those who have seen my works all the way through to this point have a good eye, so creating ideas that exceed their expectations is also a challenge. After certain ideas are exhausted, I think there will always be more interesting ones.
Image Courtesy of Tatsuya Tanaka. Paper Sea.
DB: Could you speak a little bit about the material choices you make when crafting each diorama?
TT: I make a conscious effort to choose universal materials whose scale can be understood. For example, we can see the scale of vegetables or stationary; as opposed to unique toys or electric appliances whose dimensions are more difficult to understand. Without understanding the scope of the motif, the interest and intention of the idea decreases – so I pay attention to these matters. In collecting my materials, I make a conscious effort to keep things even though they might seem useless, such as clips for closing bread packaging, clothes tags, toilet paper rolls, ice lolly sticks and so on… because I don’t always know right away how they will be useful.
I’m in the wrong age demo for this campaign, so I missed these Jim Beam ads which supposedly compared collegiate drinkers to animals. I’m not sure what this wide-eyed student is supposed to represent, but it seems more like a coffee ad to me. She looks like she’s had WAY too much caffeine!
I love discovering new bookish travel destinations, and the Cafe Pushkin has raced to the top of my “must-see” list the next time I visit Moscow. The Café Pushkin is one of the most famous and highly regarded restaurants in Moscow. Its library floor is the place to see and be seen. If you plan to dine there, make reservations early, dress accordingly and bring your charge card.
Image Courtesy of Café Pushkin
The building housing the Café Pushkin has a long and storied history, but the restaurant opened on June 4, 1999.
In the 1780s, a St. Petersburg nobleman in the service of Empress Catherine the Great retired from the Royal Household and moved to Moscow. Once there, he decided to build a house and hired the best Italian architects to create a fabulous baronial Baroque mansion a la russe.
Image Courtesy of Café Pushkin
The house passed to a German aristocrat in the middle of the 19th century as part of his future wife’s dowry. Financial ruin forced the new owner to open a pharmacy in the building. As a result, the building was redesigned to inlcude :
A pharmacy situated on the ground floor. The pharmacy counter was lined with various phials containing medicines and potions.
Image Courtesy of Café Pushkin
A library full of reference books installed on the upper and mezzanine floors.
The extensive library, with more than three thousand volumes, is the biggest draw for guests. Most of the books in the collection range from the 18th Century to the 20th Century.
Image Courtesy of Café Pushkin
Multinational authors are represented in the collection. Pushkin, Gogol, Belinsky, Turgenev, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Leskov, Tolstoy, Fet, Derzhavin, Zhukovsky, Chekhov, and Dostoevsky are some of the Russian authors featured.
Image Courtesy of Café Pushkin
There are many English books (Shakespeare, Dickens, Scott, Moore, Burns), works in French ((Rousseau, Diderot, Maupassant, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Abat Prevost) and Italian (Dante, Petrarch) and German (Goethe, Heine Schiller, Hegel).
The Holy Bible is represented in many languages, as is the Holy Koran. There is a huge collection of reference works, including historical works, the Brockhaus and Efron encyclopaedias, and works on military history, medicine, mineralogy. The major literary, scientific and political periodicals are well represented.
Image Courtesy of Café Pushkin
Update: I wrote to the Café Pushkin, and they’ve kindly responded to my questions.
Image Courtesy of Café Pushkin
Can guests browse the library or read any of the books when they dine at the Café Pushkin?
Of course, our guests can browse the Library and choose any of the books for reading.
Image Courtesy of Café Pushkin
With regard to the Café Pushkin images, did you hold a ballet special event, and what was the story of the ballet?
These photos were inspired by the story about Alexander Pushkin and Natalya Goncharova.
Image Courtesy of Café Pushkin
The famous dancing master Jogel, who taught dance to the children of Moscow and St Petersburg’s nobility for many years, hosted children’s balls at the house of the Kologrivov family, which stood where the Moscow Gorky Arts Theatre now stands. It was at one such ball that Pushkin met his future wife, Natalya Goncharova.
Image Courtesy of Café Pushkin
The dancer on these photos is the Bolshoi theatre’s first soloist Maria Semenyachenko.
Painted book bricks are a fun accessory to add to your library/shelves. You can use them as book ends, door stops, or garden art.
Image Courtesy of Kent Wallisch
Pittsburgh, PA artist Kent Wallisch creates incredible custom-made Book Bricks. Wallisch’s Trompe l’oeil style both fools and delights the eye, and gives the illusion of a well-loved, and worn book. Each brick is chosen for its flaws and shape, which he uses to artistic advantage when designing the product.
Image Courtesy of Kent Wallisch
Book Bricks are not collages. They are hand painted and then covered with a weatherproof finish. The custom ideas are endless from all-time favorite classic books to – “the history of…”or very specific subjects: music or musicians, poetry, cooking, dance, art, science, sports, college yearbooks, law books, medical books, and children’s classics. Wallisch will even create an imaginary book for you; consider “The Amazing Adventures of….insert the name of your child, friend or even a loved inquisitive pet.” Or have him paint a Book Brick with the name of your yet-to-be-published best seller. Check out his Etsy store for more examples.
Photograph of books on steps by Steve Puppe, www.stevepuppe.com
If you want to try to DIY this project, here’s a tutorial .
Over at Brainpickings, Maria Popova offers a great opportunity to check out “The Most Beautiful Illustrations from 200 Years of Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales.” I had seen some of the images before, and was familiar with the work of both of Edward Gorey and Maurice Sendak.
Little Red Riding Hood Image Courtesy of Edward Gorey’s Elephant HouseMaurice Sendak “She gave him a ring that glittered with brilliants.” Picture from The Juniper Tree and Other Tales by Grimm. Image Courtesy of My Ear Trumpet.
I was not familiar with the works of either Lisbeth Zwerger or Shaun Tan, and now that I am, I shall have to add their versions of the classic fairytales to my collections.
The Unicorn ran with all its might by Lisbeth Zwerger. Image Via Illustrationcupboard Gallery. Grimms Märchen by Philip Pullman (Author), Shaun Tan (Illustrator.) Image Courtesy of Publisher Aladin Verlag GmbH.
Since I live in the Brandywine Valley, I would be remiss if I didn’t include the collections of two area museums. Some of the pieces in the collections were used to illustrate books; others are magnificent pieces in their own right.
The Delaware Art Museum has a world famous collection of Pre-Raphaelite art, considered to be the largest and most significant collection of Pre-Raphaelite art in the United States. Sir Edward Burne-Jones created the evocative painting, “The Council Chamber,” which represents the second scene in the Briar Rose series. The series was based on the story of “Sleeping Beauty,” retold during the Victorian period by Alfred Tennyson in his poem “The Day-Dream.”
Image Courtesy of The Delaware Art Museum
The Delaware Art museum also has this whimsical interpretation of the Cinderella fairytale, “She Ran Away So Quickly That He Could Not Overtake Her” by American painter and illustrator Ethel Franklin Betts Bains. It was featured in “Cinderella,” in Fairy Tales from Grimm, Hamilton W. Mabie, editor (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, not dated.)
Image Courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum
A nineteenth century revival of interest in folklore and fairy tales helped create a surge in children’s literature. Such stories offered vicarious experiences of dangers and triumphs, and called for lively illustrations appealing to children and to the adults who read to them and showed them the pictures.
The Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art is located in the renovated Hoffman’s Mill, a former gristmill built in 1864. The museum has an international reputation for its unparalleled collection and its dedication to American art with primary emphasis on the art of the Brandywine region, American illustration, still life and landscape painting, and the work of the Wyeth family. Among their many works is the charming “Goldilocks and the Three Bowls” by Jessie Willcox Smith, c. 1900. This mixed media piece was used as an illustration for “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” 4th in a “Fairy Tale Series,” Women’s Home Companion, October 1913.
Image Courtesy of Brandywine River Conservancy & Museum.
No visit to the Brandywine Valley is complete without a visit to these museums.
Image Courtesy of Protoplasma Kid/WikimediaCommons
“He who succeeds without books is in an inconsolable darkness, on a mountain without company, on a path without a crosier, in darkness without a guide.”
Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, Bishop of Puebla, Mexico
Image Courtesy of World Monuments Fund
Founded in 1646 in Puebla, Mexico; the Biblioteca Palafoxiana was the first public library established in the Americas. The collection contains books and manuscripts ranging from the 15th to the 20th century.
Image Courtesy of Protoplasma Kid via tumblr
The Biblioteca Palafoxiana owes its name and foundation to Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, Bishop of Puebla. Palafox y Mendoza donated 5,000 of his own items to the Colegio de San Juan, which was founded by him, on the condition that they be made available to the general public. The Biblioteca Palafoxiana of Puebla is noted for its authenticity and bibliographical wealth, building and bookcases, with more than 41,000 volumes and unique manuscripts.
Image Courtesy of Protoplasma Kid via tumblr
Many of its works are of global importance. These include:
Original copies of Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), which charts human history according to the Bible in words and more than 2,000 illustrations
Andreas Vesalius’s On the Fabric of the Human Body (1555), a seven-volume tome that revolutionized the study of anatomy with detailed diagrams based on actual observation and dissection
Books printed in Mexico before 1600, including Alonso Molina’s Vocabulary in Castilian and Mexican, essentially the earliest New World dictionary.
Image Courtesy of World Monuments Fund
The library is also noteworthy for its sheer beauty. The bookshelves, commissioned by Bishop Francisco Fabián y Fuero in 1773, consist of finely carved cedar, wild sunflower, and ayacahuite, a native white pine.
Image Courtesy of World Monuments Fund
A three-story gold altar at the far end of the room features an oil painting of Virgen of Trapani, which is believed to be modeled after the 14th-century sculpture attributed to Italian sculptor Nino Pisano.
Image Courtesy of Museo Biblioteca Palafoxiana
In 1981, the Mexican government declared the library a historic monument. In 2005, UNESCO added the Biblioteca Palafoxiana to the Memory of the World list, formally recognizing its international significance. In 2010, after five years of work by 30 specialists, the first digital catalog of the library’s complete contents was released; some 3,000 copies of the interactive disk were distributed to other libraries, universities, and research institutions.
This Tuesday, July 28, 2015 photo shows restored books and documents at the Baghdad National Library in Iraq. As the Islamic State militants now set out to destroy Iraq’s history and culture, including irreplaceable books and manuscripts kept in the militant-held city of Mosul, a major preservation and digitization project is underway in the capital to safeguard a millennia worth of history. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
I don’t usually cover news stories on this blog, but this report is too important to ignore. Associated Press writer Vivian Salama has just released a report in which she states:
“As Islamic State militants set out to destroy Iraq’s history and culture, including irreplaceable books and manuscripts kept in the militant-held city of Mosul, a major preservation and digitization project is underway in the capital to safeguard a millennium worth of history.”
In this Tuesday, July 28, 2015 photo, damaged books and documents await restoration at the Baghdad National Library in Iraq. Some manuscripts are torn from overuse and aging. Some others were completely fossilized over time, the combined result of moisture and scorching temperatures, looking instead like large rocks dug up from the earth. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
Unfortunately, restoration experts were already swamped with work as they tried to “preserve what’s left after thousands of documents were lost or damaged at the height of the U.S.-led invasion.”
In this Tuesday, July 28, 2015 photo, a member of the library restoration staff works on a damaged document at the Baghdad National Library in Iraq. As the Islamic State militants now set out to destroy Iraq’s history and culture, including irreplaceable books and manuscripts kept in the militant-held city of Mosul, a major preservation and digitization project is underway in the capital to safeguard a millennia worth of history. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
Salvaging these books is critical work, and necessary to maintain cultural identity.
“Library officials say that sharing Iraqi art and literature is key to combatting terrorism. In recent months, the library donated some 2,500 books to libraries in Iraq’s Diyala province after Iraqi forces recaptured towns there from Islamic State militants.”
“The militants “want history to reflect their own views instead of the way it actually happened,” Abdulkareem said. “So when an area is liberated, we send them books to replenish whatever was stolen or destroyed, but also, so that Iraqis in this area have access to these materials so they can always feel proud of their rich history.”
Please share the information about this important work.
WroteTrips™ 