SHOWCASING THE WORLD’S FINEST PROPERTIES AND THE STORIES BEHIND THEM
Books endlessly open up new worlds of imagination. Hold the journey in your hands. (Brandi Redd/Unsplash)
In the beginning was the word. Then pretty soon, more and more words came to be – in phrases, sentences, paragraphs – which helped words become ideas, stories, illuminations. In the end also was the word. And that word, writes Xenia Taliotis, was book.
Humans have been falling in love with books (there’s a word for that: bibliophilia) since they first became aware of the need to commit their thoughts to permanency. Once our ancestors graduated from graffitiing caves to writing on papyrus scrolls in Egypt 5,000 years ago, it only took a few millennia more for some people in China to start printing with woodblocks.
In 868 CE, a gentleman named Wang Jie commissioned a block printer to recreate a 6,000-word Mahayana Buddhist text called the Vajracchedika Sutra (the Diamond Sutra for western ease) on a 16-foot scroll. It was unearthed in 1900 from the walled-up Caves of the Thousand Buddhas in northwest China. Now sitting under glass in the British Library in London, it is the earliest dated printed book in existence.
Plenty of sensations in such collations of print. The bond between the tactile and the act of reading makes for silent human satisfaction. (Jan Mellström/Unsplash)
Let us sprint past the Gutenberg years of the 15th century, when moveable-type printing presses accelerated the pace at which knowledge, other worlds and other minds could be gifted to the human race. Today, over two million new books are published every year. Despite the much-vaunted view that the arrival of the Kindle on 19 November 2007 would kill books stone dead, nothing of the sort happened.
The grim reapers of print didn’t factor in the emotional attachment we have to books. We love books. The smell, the feel, the look, holding and turning pages, marking our place with a bookmark or, heaven forfend, a dog-ear corner.
Renowned for its Impossible and Ultimate collections of highly curated books on design, art, fashion, architecture, jewelry, wine, travel and more, these Assouline editions have become collectors’ items, commanding between $1,200 and $4,000. (©Assouline)
Let us also not be Luddites. Social media has helped boost the sale of printed books. Tom Walker, publishing director of employee-owned The Folio Society (est. 1947) – which produces meticulously designed and illustrated hardbacks that are often years in the making – happily notes that “Instagram and TikTok have helped bring the craft movement within our industry to new audiences.”
At the beginning of 2025, trade magazine The Bookseller asked some of the world’s biggest publishing houses for some predictions for the year ahead. HarperCollins and DK expected to see a rush for beautifully designed special editions. “Readers seek immersive experiences and tactile connections” typified the survey responses.
When we read from a book instead of a device, somehow we feel more connected to the human who created it. Printed books bring us closer to our writers, some of whom (old school) protest they still write longhand. Some even insist that a particular pen or a make of pencil sharpened by hand is essential to the task. All share the pleasure at readings and signings of handing over the physical weight of their work in the hope that we will treasure it.
We acquire, collect and even hoard books, some of which we’ll never read. There’s a word for that in Japanese: tsundoku. Some of us are so possessive of our books that we’d sooner buy new copies for friends than lend our own. We like to snuggle up with them, perhaps even invest in a special chair (how about Eero Aarnio’s Ball Chair?) that cradles us comfortably during those precious moments when we put aside our own lives and allow other minds to transport us to different eras, introduce us to fascinating people, rescue us from the stresses of the day.
A young customer at the start of her road to tsundoku in Tsutaya Books, the first Japanese book store in Hangzhou, China. The thrall of the book crosses borders. (Alamy)
Even gratuitous hours of browsing before leaving a bookshop with nothing seem well-spent. But a bag heavy with fresh reading? Well, that is another level of joy. Sometimes all we need is fast fiction that barely touches the sides of the brain or spirit, books that entertain, the perfect holiday read we leave behind in hotels, their pages blotched with suntan oil.
Other books are show-and-tells of who we are – or who we’d like to be. Home libraries are a way of revealing our tastes and interests to others: “I am what I read.” Or perhaps “I am what you think I read…” If guidance is required, you might call in a specialist such as Ultimate Library. As CEO Philip Blackwell says, “We work with our clients to build a library that reflects their character and values. We can start from scratch, or reinvigorate what they have already. Ultimately, books make a house a home.”
Books can also make a home an art gallery. This is the hyper-specialized end of the market, where the purpose of a book changes altogether. No longer just a conduit of communication, this is the book as artform in itself. And it comes from a world of tiny dedicated publishing house, traditional letterpress printing techniques, handmade paper, binding by hand.
Nearing completion. The artisanal piercing awls, hammers, rulers, bone folders, shears, beeswax, mulls, waxed threads and wheat-flour threads are stored away as the customized cover is assembled. Next? (Shutterstock)
Martyn Ould operates The Old School Press from a coastal village in southwest England. He typically produces just a few hundred copies of each book. “Creating these volumes is actually quite transportive. Choosing the text, the paper, the typeface, the spacing between lines and paragraphs, the binding, the illustrations… I print by hand, letter by letter, line by line. The paper is 100 percent dense cotton fiber. It has to be damped before I print on it. Actually, it’s more like a tattoo, the print permeates the paper. The process is rhythmic and quite meditative.”
Ould’s buyers are collectors. They will hold the book, feel its weight, leaf through it, smell it. There is reverence and respect, says Ould. “That’s why they buy private press editions. They want something with heritage, something that evidences skill and craftsmanship. Ultimately, these books are art objects.”
And at the zenith of literary retail stands Assouline. This is the heavyweight Parisian maison of ultra-luxurious, hand-bound, unique imprints on fashion, art, architecture, photography, design and travel. Not so much coffee table, more high altar. Indeed some of their 18 sumptuously configured stores are veritable cathedrals. A hush of antiquity, spiked with the modern, resonates throughout.
In 2006, the first Assouline store, in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris, did not include a bar. The needs of the reading public appear to have changed, at least here in the London flagship store, Maison Assouline. (©Justin De Souza/Assouline)
Martine and Prosper Assouline founded the brand and published their first book, a celebration of La Colombe d’Or in Provence, their favorite hotel, in 1994. They opened their first boutique in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, on the intellectually inclined Rive Gauche in Paris, in 2006. It included home fragrances and objets d’art as well as editions with the Assouline imprimatur.
Their son Alexandre, now president of the firm, continues the mix: “We believe books play a dual role as both intellectual assets and luxury objects. They are an essential part of a well-curated lifestyle. Our clients view our books as a sophisticated symbol of their respect for culture and the art of living well.”
A million miles away from the castaway holiday paperback, artefacts of this pedigree – and those who elect to own them – probably deserve a term that’s a little more elevated than mere book.
There’s a word for that, and the word was: codex. If that sounds a bit antiquarian and more than a bit hifalutin, it’s just an ancient term for a stack of pages bound at one edge. You’ll hardly ever hear it uttered, unless one day you find yourself turning musty, liver-spotted pages in the basement of a rare bookstore, alongside aficionados of horse glue and leathery perfect-bound spines.
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