Shelf Portrait #6

Pictured above is one of four shelves in the bookcases upstairs reserved for larger-format volumes, most of them art-books. I’ve owned a couple of them for nearly thirty years: the Odilon Redon exhibition catalogue and, tenth from the left, The Three Golden Keys by Peter Sís, a children’s book I bought for my niece that I loved so much I went back to get a copy for myself. Next but one to its right is the most recently-acquired on the shelf – another exhibition catalogue, this one devoted to the work of the Belgian artist Léon Spilliaert.

Half of the remaining titles were accumulated during my years in Sweden. The first five from the left fall into that category (no. 5, with the blank orange spine is a book about the work of Hungarian artist István Orosz), as do the volumes about Paula Rego and Remedios Varo. Slightly later arrivals reflecting some current fixations include Silvie Turner’s The Book of Fine Paper and The Typewriter: a Graphic History of the Beloved Machine by Janine Vangool.