A Cat Fit For A Library, And A Library Fit For A Cat

By Nancy Mattoon

Toff Relaxes With Another Carleton College Treasure,
A Bust Of Poet Friedrich von Schiller.
(Image Courtesy of Carleton College.)

On March 9, 2011 students, faculty, and staff at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota mourned the loss of one of the school library's most popular visitors. Toff the Cat, who died of cancer at age 14, had been adopted by the entire campus, but was especially popular with the literary set. His April 1st birthday was celebrated with book displays in the Laurence McKinley Gould Library, and his recommended reading list was an annual feature both there and at the campus bookstore.

Toff Enjoying One Of His Favorite Books.
(Image Courtesy of Carleton College.)

Toff began his days as a house cat belonging to the daughter of two Carleton professors, but his thirst for knowledge took him beyond the narrow confines of his birthplace. He spent over a dozen years on the Carleton College campus, got elected to student senate as a write-in candidate, was featured in the alumni magazine and on the school's website, and even appeared on postcards sold at the student bookstore. Sadly, he never completed a degree, despite attending classes and turning up at the library at all hours.

Toff's Birthday,
Celebrated With A Book Display At The Gould Library.
(Image Courtesy of Carleton College.)

Toff's late-night study habits resulted in a run-in with campus security on at least one occasion. According to the campus crime blotter, officers responded to a motion detector alarm tripped at the school's library around 3 a.m. The commander's official report outlines the cold, hard facts,"I began a search of the Libe only to locate the suspect on the second floor. Looking into the uncaring, unfeeling eyes of the suspect, I realized that Toff really has an attitude towards Security." (Toff found the atmosphere more welcoming at his other after-hours haunt, Northfield's Contented Cow pub.)

Toff Was Forever In Clover At Carleton.
(Image Courtesy of Carleton College.)

News of Toff's passing was covered by newspapers throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin, and his Facebook page has been filled with condolences. "I'll miss you waiting at the library doors for someone to let you in," one message reads. Another student notes she'll miss "the sound of his bell as he strolls through the Libe." Economics professor Martha Paas, one of Toff's housemates, summed up his rebellious appeal: "Even though there's a rule that animals may not go into [campus] buildings, it didn't apply to him because he was who he was."

In honor of Carleton College's beloved campus cat, and others like him, Booktryst is highlighting the brilliant creation of Belgian industrial furniture designer Corentin Dombrecht. His modular stairway to feline heaven, The Cat Library, was inspired by a video of Pages, a former stray from Valley Center, Kansas, who found a home at the Public Library. This ingenious bookcase will be on show at the 2011 Stockholm Furniture Fair. It features customized, kitty-sized stairs leading to a built-in, top-shelf lounging basket. Dombrecht notes that the prototype was, "Approved by Mitsu. My mother-in-law's cat." We bet Toff would have loved it.
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A Bookshelf Made by FDR, Woodworker

by Stephen J. Gertz

A homemade, portable wooden bookshelf made by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32d President of the United States, in 1925 will be auctioned at Boomsbury-NY, on Wednesday, December 8, 2010. It is estimated at $3,500 - $4,500.

Made for Marguerite A. LeHand ("Missy"), FDR's companion, personal secretary, and hostess in Eleanor's absence, and carved with her initials and, below, his - "FDR 1925" - it was, apparently, a practical gift for her while the two traveled together during most of 1925, a small (50.5H x 49.5W x 19.5D cm), convenient, on-the-go bookcase. Roosevelt and Missy spent long hours on trains, traveling between Hyde Park, Manhattan,  Warm Springs, and his houseboat in Florida.

FDR had been a hobbyist woodworker in childhood. In 1921, when he contracted polio and remained at Hyde Park, the family estate in Duchess County, New York, to recover, he returned to it to fruitfully pass the time and cope with the physical challenges of his infirmity. Eleven years later an article appearing in Craftsman magazine in 1932, stated "Mrs. Roosevelt is not the only woodworking fan in her family.  Her husband, Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, follows it as his hobby to give him relaxation from his strenuous days in the state house at Albany, New York."

Bloomsbury, in their catalog note, hesitates to declare it as definitively FDR's creation: "this piece was made by FDR or perhaps a local craftsman in Hyde Park."

But there were no skilled craftsmen in Hyde Park; it was a farming community with, perhaps, a handyman for repairs and light projects. There was, however, one skilled woodworker close to Eleanor Roosevelt, Nancy Cross.

In 1925,  Eleanor, Marion Dickerman, and Cross built Val-Kill, a stone cottage on the Roosevelt property that the three shared. A furniture designer as well as a woodworker, Cross made all the furnishings, each of which was monogrammed EMN - the ladies' initials. 

This bookshelf, however, was not wrought with the fine woodworking skill that Cross possessed. And it is highly unlikely that FDR would commission a local to create what was a gift to a close companion with their initials carved into it; there's an intimacy to it that strongly suggests that this was strictly between the two of them. And, significantly,  this bookshelf is small and simple enough that it would not have been an unwieldy endeavor for one  confined to a wheelchair; he could have easily made it, and with much free time at his disposal and his own skill,  why would he not? Those carved initials? If the bookshelf had been commissioned by  FDR the builder would have wrought them with greater skill; they are fairly crude.

Yet the possibility exists that it was made by another and only signed by FDR.

The last piece of strong, circumstantial evidence that FDR indeed made this bookshelf himself, I believe, nails it. During 1925, Eleanor, Nancy Cross and Marion Dickerson established a woodworking shop at Val-Kill to employ the local farmers and teach thier children a craft after the harvest and before Spring. The women had to recruit skilled craftsmen from around the country and Europe as teachers and builders: there were none in the area. In 1926, the woodworking shop at Val-Kill became Val-Kill Industries, creating and selling furniture in the Early American style. FDR had a complete woodworking shop at his disposal.

Provenance on the bookcase is solid: the former property of Anna K. McGowan, Hyde Park, NY; Edgar McGowan was caretaker of the Roosevelt family estate at Campobello Island. It seems likely that they were related to one another.

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Images courtesy of Bloomsbury.
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Chippendale Bookcase, c. 1765, Estimated at $700K-$1M

by Stephen J. Gertz

The Messer Chippendale Secretaire Library Bookcase
99 in. (251.5 cm) high; 79 in. (199.5 cm) wide; 24 1/2 in. (162.5 cm) deep.

Need bookshelf space but Ikea won't cut it? Want to move up into shelving that makes a statement, as in, Lottery Winner!?

In New York, on October 21, 2010, Christies is offering the Samuel Messer Chippendale Secretaire Library Bookcase, a George III ebony-inlaid mahogany art cabinet attributed to Thomas Chippendale, c. 1765, as part of its 500 Years: Decorative Arts Europe sale.

Christies, which originally sold the piece as part of its Messer Collection of English Furniture sale in 1991, estimates it will sell for $700,000 to $1,000,000.

"Of stepped breakfront outline, the central section with imbricated and ebony-veneered swan's neck cresting centered by a platform over a fiddleback mahogany cross-grained frieze, the central door with glazing bars centered by a foliate C-scroll cartouche suspended from husk chairs and within an arch and lozenge tablets, the side sections with pierced hexagon-pattern galleries and later draped urn ebony-inlaid finials over glazed doors of a similar arched and lozenge design headed by a clasp, the three doors enclosing mahogany-fronted shelves, the base with a secretaire drawer fitted with a baize-lined double ratchet easel and two mahogany-lined side drawers (one divided) over three long drawers all mounted with original foliate-cast gilt-lacquered handles, flanked by a pair of cut-corner cupboard doors, the whole inlaid in ebony with stylized foliate scrolls, and broad lines in geometric patterns of cut-corner and circular panels, with ebonized-molded base, the hinges of top drawer stamped H. TIBATS, and labeled G. JETLEY/24, BRUTON ST. BERKELEY SQ. WI, the central platform support and finials later, the underside of plinth with yellow wash over an apparently original red wash" (From Christies' catalog description).

And, unlike Ikea book shelves, no assembly required.

(That catalog note is one of the most  objectively observed, keenly articulate, yet lyrical descriptions that I have read in quite a while. The prose sings, the report enchants,  by the end you're in a trance).

The volumes that could have filled this bookcase in 1765 may likely have included books that were issued in that year, first editions new then but rare books now:

• Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Lawrence Stern  (vols. 7 and 8).
• The Fool of Quality by Henry Brooke.
• Works of William Collins.
• The Works of Ossian (James Macpherson).
• Commentaries on the Laws of England by William Blackstone.
• A Complete History of England by Thomas Smollett.
• An Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life by  Joseph Priestley.
• Essays by Oliver Goldsmith.
• The Plays of William Shakespeare, edited by Samuel Johnson.
• A Review of Doctor Johnson's New Edition of Shakespeare by William Kenrick.

But I like to think that the very wealthy gentleman of the Age of Enlightenment who originally bought it was one with an interest in Shakespeare and also owned a First Folio, and a Gutenberg. He had an interest in science and so possessed first  editions of  Copernicus, Galileo. and other greats. Early printing fascinated him; he had an eye for incunabula.

If those books come with the bookcase at the Christies sale bump up the estimate a few million or so.
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The Bookcase as Ark And A Tower Of Power

The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

A very special exhibit is now on view at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  Titled 1:1  Architects Build Small Spaces, the V&A commissioned a group of international architects to build a series of structures throughout the Museum which respond to the theme of  space as retreat.

The fundamental idea is of a small enclosed space representing an escape from the chaos of urban life to an area for peace, contemplation, shelter or creativity. Or, of course, reading. 

To that end, the Scandinavian architecture firm Rintala and Eggertsson has built The Ark.

The Ark at the V&A Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian

Dagur Eggertsson writes of his firm and this project:

Rintala Eggertsson started two and a half years ago in Norway. I think there is a Scandinavian element in our work definitely. We conceive our ideas from our existence.

Bodø is the main town North of Norway is far above the Arctic Circle so there is no sunlight for two months but it’s very close to nature and it’s really a fantastic place to visit and an inspiration.

It’s the book store and the library on the second floor [of the V&A], so we wanted to connect those two parts of the museum with a book tower so that you could read the continuity from the stored books to the books that are sold and become eventually a part of every people’s life out there.

The tower is a bookcase in itself. The first thing you meet is the white backside of the books and they don’t reveal themselves until you get to the inside where you get the spine of the book. I think it is important for us to show that architecture is not a mystical thing but it’s about putting one stick on top of the other like every small child does in the beginning of their life.

Rintala Eggertsson Architects, Oslo and Bodø, Norway - Ark from Victoria and Albert Museum on Vimeo.

As far as I've been able to determine, The Ark is not yet covered on Bookshelfporn.com. Yes, you read correctly: Bookshelf Porn. The site is one hot cheesecake shot of bookshelves after another; a fetish site for book sluts, the book-laden bookshelf as centerfold. It's strictly va-va-voom, oh la la! and NSFW.

See you there. I'm the one in the raincoat, wearing shades, and with hat pulled down to maintain some semblance of anonymity and discretion. One cannot be too careful; a book offense on one's record could become the mark of Cain and rep as a "book molester" is a terrible burden to bear. Try getting a library card with that horrific scar forever in your digital dossier.

All I did was look a little too lovingly, really. The book was only "slightly rubbed." I'm innocent. (But the joints were so tender!).
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With thanks to the Guardian for the lead.
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Of related interest:
The Leaning Bookshelves of Deger Gengiz.
The Rolling Reader.
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