What’s on Your Office Bookshelf?
Here at Lifework, we get a chance to see inside a lot of home offices. And while we’re often focused on the centerpiece of the space — the desk, the accompanying chair, the computer setup — one thing that often catches the eye is when someone chooses to show us the books on their bookshelf (such as James Teo of Ampulets Design in Singapore, above).
Obviously, some are for reference on the job. Some might be left over from college courses, when books were such mighty investments. But with an increasingly more digital age that gives us so much instruction, opinion, and inspiration (and, for those of us who write, dictionary.com) at the ready on the Internet, there’s less need to reach for something off your shelf — making it all the more interesting to see what stayed in a workspace and what didn’t.
So what’s on your home office bookshelf? What does it say about you? What will always remain — and what, if ever, will you someday leave behind?
An artist’s necessities share the shelf with Kristina Klarin‘s lineup of books on interiors, graphic design, and decorative art.
Based on this limited library, can you guess the profession of Cameron Moll?
Abby Kellett, interior stylist and owner of the home boutique Gretel, fills her Miami home workspace with magazines and tomes on Art Basel.
The taxi-cab yellow FontBook makes another appearance, this time in the collection of New York City-based graphic designer Ricky Ferrer.
Magazines and works of fiction stock the library in the Brooklyn home office of lifestyle-brand consultant and design writer Sophie Donelson.
Art director and graphic designer Erin Jang of The Indigo Bunting got her start working in New York City for magazines like Martha Stewart Living and Esquire, which explains why they fill the shelves in her space. (They serve as portfolio pieces, after all.)
Graphic designer Carolyn Sewell hand-lettered (hand-lettered!) covers for each and every book in her Washington, D.C.-based home workspace — a design statement in its own right.
Photos: James Teo, Kristina Klarin, Cameron Moll, Ricky Ferrer, Sophie Donelson, Erin Jang, Carolyn Sewell
I have one book on my (work) office bookshelf: Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office. Seven years into the job, I have a corner office with four windows! In my home office, I don’t have a bookshelf. My books live in the living room with me!