COFFEE TABLE LIBRARY
Eastern standard
 |
Unless you plan on relocating to Japan and building a new home, Marcia Iwatate and Geeta K. Mehta’s Japan Houses is unlikely to provide ideas about how to decorate your living room. However the striking, almost alien, re-definition of luxury that it presents is domestic titillation for the minimalist mind. Focusing on highly stylized architectural anomalies that embody the classically Japanese approach to technology, space and innovation, it’s an exotic and intriguing visual tour that will leave you with a strangely intense desire for your own rock garden.—Lily Robertson
HOT PICK
Speaker of the house
 |
The aesthetics of electronics generally make us squirm, but this little bookshelf speaker—the Mirage Nanosat Prestige, which we spotted at Crutchfield—charmed us with its good looks. It’s cute. There, we’ve said it. And we’re told it sounds pretty good, too.—E.H.
HELP LINE
Pump up the volumes
Question for Susan Scott, owner of Clear Spaces Consulting: How can I reorganize a bookshelf to make it look neater?
Answer: Scott compares arranging items on a bookshelf to being a painter who responds to a blank canvas. “[Bookshelves] make the difference in the room when they’re organized right,” she says.
 |
First step: “Pull them all off and do a good dusting,” she says. “Then you can decide if it’s important to have them grouped: novels all together, cookbooks, reference books. That’s a good way to start if that’s important to you. If not, you can do it by size. I like to stack books according to size—lining them up that way, making stacks on the floor.”
Next, think about things you can intersperse with groups of books, like framed photos or pottery. “Many times people have photos on top and books at the bottom, and it looks better when it’s integrated,” says Scott. Think variety and balance. “If you start putting books to the left, go two thirds of the way across. Then that [remaining] space could be filled with a photograph. Then come the other direction on the next shelf down. The books are not all lined up together, they’re placed like a checkerboard.”
Since the middle shelves are both the most visible and the most convenient, that’s the spot for your most prized objects and most often-used books. What goes on the margins? “Some people are really attached to their National Geographics or Gourmet Cooking,” says Scott; “those might go at the bottom. Turn those so they can lay flat. Reference books and catalogs go at the bottom because they’re heavier and not as attractive.”
And there are some things, Scott says, that don’t deserve to be part of the display at all. “The beach novels—I would put those somewhere else,” she says. “For some reason, the torn edges are sad-looking. I would pass those on to a friend.”—Erika Howsare