Augustus Gladstone's stacked-book shelves

BoingBoing recently posted a compelling video (below or link here) of a toupeed fellow named Augustus Gladstone giving a tour of the room he lives in in an abandoned hotel, in some unnamed city. Gladstone’s apartment is an eccentric, strangely homey place decorated with what appears to be mostly found stuff and collections of bric-a-brac. There’s some question as to the authenticity of the video but no matter. It’s really interesting either way.

What caught our eye (in addition to two old TV’s placed one on top of the other) was an ingenious shelving unit using stacks of books as bricks to hold boards. It’s clever, and in another setting, could be pretty chic. Just for the hell of it, we typed “books as bricks” into google images and found some beautiful iterations of the idea, like
artist Magdalena Ball’s beautiful octagonal Book Cell

…and this uncredited photo of book-bricks made into a curving wall

Image - photo of a curved wall made out of BOOKS stacked like bricks. There would have to be hundreds and hundreds of books in this wall! Or… maybe they’re built on a mirror? There is some distortion on the top and bottom of the photo.
TIMES WHEN I SUCK AT DESCRIBING PHOTOS!

…and a desk made of library books

…and this, found here:

books as bricks for shelving

Needless to say, we’re looking at books differently now.

Here’s the Augustus Gladstone video that started it all (link here):

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