THE HOUSE AND ITS EQUIPMENT. 39 



LIBRARIES AND BOOKCASES. 



Jitiiiv His/orv &amp;lt;&amp;gt;/ the Care ol hooks Tour Mtiin Systems oj Iloiixini; Than I he /Y/&amp;gt;v.v Hookcit^&quot;, 

 I lie I ni/ilt in of Doors Decorative Treatment j Libraries (iooil Dimension* tor lii i&amp;gt;/(\/!,-/,- i &quot;-. 



THERE is perhaps no room in a house which may bo expected to reveal the character ol iN o\\ ner 

 more markedly than does tin; library. It is a place where one meets &amp;gt;ilenl friends, and il i- 

 seemly, therefore, that the decorations should be restrained and Mibordinate to the main purpose, 

 the care of books. They may be housed either in separate bookcases, or on shelves which lorm 

 part of the architectural treatment of Ihe room. Both methods will be discussed in this chapter. 

 The history of bookcases is an interesting one, and necessarily bound up with the whole arrange 

 ment of libraries. As ill the case of all other furniture, their study is helped by some knowledge of the 

 requirements arising out of the care of books. This subject has been admirably dealt with by the lite 

 fohn Willis (lark, whose &quot; (are of Books &quot; is a mine of information to which one naturally turns. His 

 researches, however, were carried no later than the end ot the eighteenth century, while the subject-matter 

 of this chapter will include some interesting modern examples. Bookcases may be divided into lour 

 main types: I. Chests, presses and cupboards. 2. The lei tern svMem. ;. The stall &amp;gt;ystem. 

 4. The wall system. The evolution wrapped up in these lour types must be considered, even if it 

 involves delving into habits of antiquity. 



Perhaps the first reference to a library is that in the Book of K/ra. where we may assume that 

 the &quot; House of the Records &quot; was the repository of inscribed clay tablets. For the latter, the thonghtlul 

 Mesopotamia!! provided slate shelves. There seems no doubt that shelving was also provided in the 

 magnificent library at I ergamou, extending to about two hundred thou&amp;gt;and volumes, which Mark 

 Antony gave to Cleopatra. In the days ol Imperial Rome there were no fewer than twenty-six public 

 libraries, the chiet contents ol which were rolls kept in presses. Plutarch mention-, Lucullus as a 

 collector of line books, whose examples set a fashion in Rome. Seneca, who was more interested in the 

 iusides of books than their outsides, wrote with an entertaining savageness about tho&amp;gt;e who regarded 

 books as ornaments rather than tools for the mind. He tilts, moreover, at the folk who liked handsome 

 bookcases, &quot;why should you excuse a man who wishes to possess book proves inlaid with iii / t&amp;gt;r-&amp;lt;i/(i&quot; 

 wood or ivory? &quot; In his annoyance, however, he gives us some useful facN. Bookcases were built 

 as high as the ceiling, and, it would appear, against the wall. The presses found at I lerculaneum seem 

 to be very much like the modern bookcase with cornices at the top, but, of course, deeper from back to front , 

 because they accommodated rolls more than Hat books, though the latter type, called Codex, was in use 

 as early as the beginning of the third century. Most Roman bookcases, however, seem to have been built 

 u]) of pigeon-holes rather than with shelves, except in the case of bedside books, which the younger Pliny 

 kept in a press let into the wall, and holding books &quot; not merely to be read, but read over and over auain.&quot; 



We may roughly assume, then, that the classical librarian resorted chiefly to bookcases of our lirst 

 type, consisting of presses arranged pigeon-hole fashion, with some employment of the wall system for the 

 flat books or codices. This does not mean, of course, that shelves were not used in presses, for there is a 

 mosaic representation of a fifth century cupboard with a pair of doors and two shelves on which bo &amp;gt;ks lie 

 flat-wise. The next stage in the development was in the direction of the lectern. Books were so valuable 

 in the Middle Ages that they had to be handled carefully, and as, moreover, they were heavy, the best 

 method was to read them as they lay on a sloping desk, to which they were brought from cupboards, 

 such as the great &quot; almeries of wainscot &quot; which stood in the Cloister at Durham. In monastic houses 

 reading was generally done in carrells, which were little bays in one or more of the Cloister walks. As 

 the number of books grew, presses were scattered in odd spaces about the monastic buildings, and it was 

 only in rare cases, such as at Christ s Church, Canterbury, where separate libraries were provided to 

 house them. 



The lectern system reached its most characteristic form in such libraries as that of Trinity Hall 

 (Fig. 59), Cambridge, where the sloping desks were set back to back. In some such cases the books 

 were chained to a top rail. \Ve are brought into intimate touch with this arrangement through a sketch 

 by Michelangelo himself for the lectern type of bookcase which he fitted in the Medicean Library at 

 Florence. This shows a figure sitting in front of the bookcase, and indicates that he was considering 

 what height would be most convenient for the reader. Beneath the sloping lectern are shelves on which 

 additional books lie flat. As books became less rare, the system of chaining them to lecterns broke down, 



