Home furnishings, continued

We’ve written about books-as-tables here.  But say, don’t you need a chair to go with that table?

Look no further.  Timorous Beasties introduces La Bibliochaise.  For a mere $7,000 (not counting shipping costs from Scotland) you could sit on about 5 meters, or about 16 feet, of bookshelf space.

Alternatively, try the Parisian Dondola, from Made 75.  The English version of the site says “Price on Request.”  I consider that an early warning signal.

For a high art version, see Richard Hutten‘s stacked book chair in Ghent (below) — with the Dutch artist inside of it.  The internationally renowned, 40-something Hutten is considered “one of the most well-known and most unconventional Dutch designers,” according to the Chair Blog. “Hutten is a conceptual designer but his designs are highly functional, each and every one of them. Often the object will even have multiple functions.”

Obviously, none of the multiple functions include actually reading the books.

No mention of a price for the Hutten piece — you have every reason to fear the worst…

I think I’ll stick to Ikea.

Author: Cynthia Haven

Cynthia Haven has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, and other publications. Her work has also appeared in Le Monde, La Repubblica, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly Conversation, The Georgia Review, Civilization, and others. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven was published in London, 2005. Her Czestaw Mitosz: Conversations was published in 2006; Joseph Brodsky: Conversations in 2003; An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czestaw Mitosz was published in 2011 with Ohio University Press / Swallow Press. She is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford. Her biography René Girard, A Life will be published next year. Join me at twitter: @chaven View all posts by Cynthia Haven