Designer Matt Carr found found two vintage coffee tables and was inspired to create a bookrack for his own home. Earning points for recycling and keepin' it green (possibly saving the tables from the landfill), he configured them into the Biblioteca Bookrack, offered by Umbra.
The shelves have a natural mahogany top and black lacquered legs. Dimensions: 44" x 37" x 11" (111 cm x 93 cm x 20 cm).
$525 on the Umbra site, but pssst, Unica Home offers it for $500.
Heston Blumenthal from world-renowned The Fat Duck in Bray, England is known for his expensive and innovative cuisine and now one of the world's best chef is creating one of the world's priciest cookbooks. He is partnering with the jewelry company Asprey to created a limited edition £1,000 luxury leather-bound book. The book will also come with two surprise 'silver gifts' from Asprey. The Independent reports that in spite of a weakening global economy luxury books are still big business. We've certainly seen more than a few, check out some examples in the gallery below.
Whether or not you support the reasons and politics behind why our troops are deployed, the troops themselves always deserve our support to make their service more pleasant and bearable. Books for Soldiers is a non-profit corporation that sends books to soldiers to help alleviate some of the boredom they face when isolated on bases in foreign countries and facing massive amounts of downtime. It's a great way to get rid of books you've already read (instead of taking them to a used book store) or why not buy the soldiers some books brand new? They certainly deserve it.
It seems like I barely have time to read anything anymore that isn't online, but I still love books. Bookshelves of books are relaxing and interesting, and they bring extra depth to a room's decor. The best thing is an established home with an established library of books, but what if you're just starting out or are completely redoing the interior design of a room? It could take years to find and collect the right kind of books if you do it yourself, but if you go through New York City Strand Bookstore you can order custom designed books by the foot. Looking for a collection of old leather-bound classics? Or maybe a bookshelf full of your favorite hobby? You can spend as little as $10 per foot (for a random mix) or as much as $400 per foot (for 19th century antique leather hardcovers).
I think it would be fun! Kind of like a big grab bag of books.
There are countless rare books in the world, but by most expert's standards the rarest of them all is the Gutenberg Bible. It was the first book ever printed back in 1456, and although several hundred copies were originally printed finding a complete first edition would net you $25-$35 million. In today's market single pages alone go for $25,000 each, and several years ago just 1 volume (it's a 2 volume set) sold for $5.5 million.
Besides the Gutenberg Bible other rare books include the first edition of Shakespeare's collected works from 1623 (worth $6 million), a collection of Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts (potentially worth as much as $100 million), and of course any first edition copy of the Declaration of Independence (worth $8 million). Edgar Allen Poe's work also makes in onto the "rarest books" list with his first published poem ("Tamerlane") being rare and difficult to find due to a byline of simply "By A Bostonian." It's worth as much as $200,000 to the right buyer.
A few weeks ago, we learned that Victoria Beckham had bought her kids a Neiman Marcus treehouse for Christmas, now The Sun reports that David Beckham has bought his wife a book for Christmas. Now a book may not sound like much of a present, especially for Victoria, who, although she has authored a couple of books, famously claimed in 2005 never to have read one, but this is no ordinary book. David bought Victoria Una Grande Storia Italiana - Valentino Garavani, a fabulous new book from Taschen which celebrates the designer. The book comes in a silk-covered clamshell box that is tinted in Valentino red. Inside, the 738-page book includes drawings, magazine shoots, advertisements, portraits of Valentino, and documentary photographs. The text includes Vanity Fair writer Matt Tyrnauer's interviews with twenty of Valentino's collaborators and friends and a tribute to Valentino by fashion writer Suzy Menkes. The Collector's Edition is limited to 2,000 individually numbered copies, each signed by Valentino and sells for $1,000. At least if Victoria doesn't read it she can check out the pretty pictures.
The money will be donated to The Children's Voice, a charity that campaigns for the rights of children in Europe and was co-founded by Rowling and Baroness Nicholson back in 2005. In response to the auction's end Rowling was "ecstatic" and was quoted as saying "It means Christmas has come early to me this year."
If you can't afford one of Jeff Koons's monumental works you can content yourself, or the art lover on your holiday list, with a book on his workds. The Jeff Koons monograph includes a catalog of his work which is organized to tell his story through pictures. There are 100 limited art edition copies with an original artwork by the artist. The book is 606 pages and measures a hefty 13" x 17¼". It sells for $1,000.
Each edition is signed and numbered by Christopher Tolkien and Oscar winner Alan Lee and comes hand bound in the finest leather with a hand-sewn spine for the ultimate in beauty and durability. £350
The Maltese Falcon, the amazing clipper yacht created by Tom Perkins has gotten its own coffee table book. The Maltese Falcon: Art of Innovation is a 240-page book full of lush photography and tells the story of the creation of this gorgeous yacht which was a labor of love for Perkins. The 287-foot yacht has three masts which can rotate depending on the wind direction. Just how was the $100 million it took to build this yacht spent? The book goes into the long hard journey from design to launch. The book however, will only run you £55. The book is a limited edition of 5000.
Related: It looks like Perkins' house in Belvedere, CA is still on the market. It was our estate of the day back in October of 2006 and is listed at $20.5 million.
've seen high-priced books from Gucci and Chanel recently and now Valentino gets the deluxe treatment. Una Grande Storia Italiana - Valentino Garavani is a new book from Taschen. The book comes in a silk-covered clamshell box that is tinted in Valentino red. Inside, the 738-page book includes drawings, magazine shoots, advertisements, portraits of Valentino, and documentary photographs. The text includes Vanity Fair writer Matt Tyrnauer's interviews with twenty of Valentino's collaborators and friends and a tribute to Valentino by fashion writer Suzy Menkes. The Collector's Edition is limited to 2,000 individually numbered copies, each signed by Valentino and sells for $1,000.
A regular edition of Roger Shashoua's book Dancing with the Bear: A Serial Entrepreneur Goes East can be had for around $30. But somehow it seems fitting that a book about getting seriously rich should also come in a seriously rich edition. How does £3m strike you? That is what British entrepreneur Shashoua is hoping to fetch for the made-to-order "oligarch" edition of his book, which features over 600 flawless diamonds on the cover.
The book, said to be the most expensive in the world, is touted as a how-to guide for entrepreneurs looking to follow in Shashoua's footsteps and make big money in post-Soviet Russia. Shashoua knows of what he speaks - he is the co-founder of ITE, which trades on the London Stock Exchange with a market value of more than £500m.
It seems to me that those who could actually afford this special edition book probably don't need the advice. But Shashoua hopes the wealthy Russian ex-pats who might buy it won't just stash it in the safe. "I can only hope that oligarchs will read the book, rather than just keeping it locked away," he says.
From the same publishing company that brought out the massively expensive Pele book comes Superyacht a massive coffee table book devoted to megayachts. The book, which is limited to 1,000 copies includes archive photography and newly commissioned photography of the greatest boats on the water today. The book has 648 full-color pages, gatefolds and is bound in silver Italian silk. Eve more intriguingly, it comes in a clam-shell Lucite case that protects if from water. It sells for $3,950.
Bookends can be cute, and they come in all different shapes and sizes, but what if you never needed them again to keep your books straight and standing up in the bookshelf? The Gravity Powered Bookshelf will do just that trick, no matter if you have 10 books, 2 books, or just a lone floppy magazine on the shelf.
The name makes it sound like it's got moving parts or something, but it's really just an interesting-looking bookcase that uses gravity to its advantage. And although I do like it, I also think it looks a little homemade (like in a college dorm room kinda way).
PBA Galleries is offering another rare book for auction. This one is actually a set of Johann Wilhelm Weinmann's Duidelyke Vertoning, also known as the Phytanthoza Iconographia. The four-volume set was published in Amsterdam from 1736 to 1748 and contained some 1,025 plates of plants, many of them color mezzotints and considered the first successful use of color printing in a botanical work. This version has the text and plates interspersed and is listed with an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000. The book is up for bid on June 14 and the auction's listing has a few more pictures from this beautiful work.
Designer Matt Carr found found two vintage coffee tables and was inspired to create a bookrack for his own home. Earning points for recycling and keepin' it green (possibly saving the tables from the landfill), he configured them into the Biblioteca Bookrack, offered by Umbra.
