i have a feeling i've written about this before but i will write it again anyway

for the longest time, this was my smut:

The above gothic looking picture above is of the Trinity Library in Dublin. This one below is of the Biblioteca Real in Madrid.


and this very grand looking one is of the Strahovska Knihovna in Praha (i am guessing from all the skas and has that this is in prague, Czechoslovakia).


if you look at the above three pictures with your eyes squinted a little and if you are, like me, a little delusional, then you can sort of imagine having them as intimate rooms in your own imaginary -- and palatial -- house. but the one below? well, it sort of looks too much like a public space, too....institutional. so i don't really drool over it as much as i do the three above.


these are all photos from a book titled "library lust". yes you heard right.

i also drool over -- slightly -- more realistic ones. this membership only library in italy for example:



"My perfect library would be a wing of a country house, with very high ceilings and a gallery; below it French windows opening on to a meadow with trees in the distance. Shelves would cover all the walls, with an oak staircase on wheels to get at the higher reaches, and a spiral staircase to the gallery, also full of books. A door would lead to an inner room, my study, with French windows leading on to an orchard. A spiral staircase within this room would ascend to a small bedroom above, with a tiny bathroom and rudimentary kitchen. So I could, at need, live a self-contained existence within my library-stronghold. In the main room would be a large mahogany table with racks containing portfol-ios of drawings and watercolours by its sides. No pictures on the walls — just books — and no nonsense of terrestrial and celestial globes." Paul Johnson at The Spectator.

My ideal library on the other hand would be something that will take up the entire half of the house. every other room will have to share the other half. i can do without a living room. if i have guests, i can bring them to the library, show them to a seat and we can each burrow our heads in our own books. i will make ice tea for the two of us even.

but lately, i have been downgrading because instead of libraries, i find myself trawling the web for pictures such as these:



these are photos of the studios or work rooms of crafts people. i am drooling over their storage "systems" in particular. yes. these days, drawers aren't content being simply called drawers. they now snootily refer to themselves as "storage systems".

this room below is very nice, except for the blue bubble valance over the shuttered window. i hate the valance and the fact that the window is shut. the black thing on the right wall looks like a storage "system" for ribbons, can you imagine that. i want five of those.

if you notice that the pictures all contain a particular kind of "storage system", its because all these are all photos from a competition for best work studio sponsored by the makers of that "system", the www.bestscrapbookshelf.com.

these ones here below are used to store beads. oh how this will make my life easier. maybe i can have a local carpenter make one like it?



its telling too that lately, i have been crafting more than reading.