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Selling a Book by Its Cover

05 janvier 2011
"It took Thatcher Wine a year to amass 2,000 well-preserved white vellum and cream-colored leatherbound books for a 'gentleman's library' in the Northern California estate of a private equity manager. Perfectly matched sets of books bound in antique vellum, a pale leather made from goat or sheep skin, are an elusive quarry, especially if they all have to be in English, said Mr. Wine, a former Internet entrepreneur who now creates custom book collections and decorative 'book solutions', as he puts it, in his Boulder, Colo., warehouse." New York Times journalist Penelope Green visits "book decorator" Thatcher Wine. Snippets from an article about an unusual profession and about clients who - sometimes - want "the option of being able to read" their books.
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Penelope Green in The New York Times


"It took Thatcher Wine a year to amass 2,000 well-preserved white vellum and cream-colored leatherbound books for a 'gentleman’s library' in the Northern California estate of a private equity manager. Perfectly matched sets of books bound in antique vellum, a pale leather made from goat or sheep skin, are an elusive quarry, especially if they all have to be in English, said Mr. Wine, a former Internet entrepreneur who now creates custom book collections and decorative 'book solutions', as he puts it, in his Boulder, Colo., warehouse."

New York Times journalist Penelope Green visits "book decorator" Thatcher Wine. Snippets from an article about an unusual profession and about clients who - sometimes - want "the option of being able to read" their books.

"The old practice of buying yards of leatherbound law journals or Swedish medical texts for an instant library is out of favor. 'I don’t think you should have law journals unless one of you is actually a lawyer,' Mr. Weinstock said. Instead, some designers are finding ever more elaborate ways to tweak books their clients already own. Peter Pennoyer, a New York architect, is designing wooden boxes that look like perfectly bound books ('in sort of a tomato-soup-with-cream color,' he said) to contain an unruly looking collection of literary classics owned by a client."

“'We’ve had a great year — it’s broken all records,' Mr. Roberts said, noting that his book-by-the-foot business now represents almost 20 per cent of his total sales. Though 'earth tones' are his bestsellers, he said, last week a national builder asked for light blue and gray books to stage multiple homes. A TV news program wanted linen-wrapped books chopped in half to fit the shallow, faux-shelves of a political interview program. And on Tuesday, a Chicago restaurant called for 100 linear feet of distressed clothbound books. 'Must be there by Monday!' Mr. Roberts said."

Read the whole article:

>>> Selling a Book by Its Cover, by Penelope Green in The New York Times (January 5, 2011)