There was a good year or two, roughly whenever exposed brick and Edison bulbs were peaking everywhere at once, when this site was fully anti industrial bookcase. Too try hard. Too much like a WeWork had married a coffee roastery. That opinion has quietly reversed itself over time and nobody has formally announced it, we’ve just all gradually started buying them again and pretending we were always on board.
What actually turned it round is living with one rather than photographing one. The black metal frame does the thing shelving is supposed to do, which is disappear once it’s full, so all anyone actually sees is the mess of books and plants and the single motorbike helmet someone refuses to store anywhere sensible. Wood veneer versions scuff if you so much as look at them wrong.
The proper welded steel and reclaimed timber ones cost more than feels reasonable for something with this few parts, and we said as much for years, right up until one of the cheaper versions shed a shelf pin within about four months and dumped an entire poetry collection on someone’s foot.
It also holds an ENORMOUS amount, which nobody mentions because it’s not a glamorous selling point, but when you’ve run out of wall for the fifth time it matters more than the finish does.
There’s still a split on styling it.
Some of us think it wants to look a bit unfinished, books stacked sideways, one shelf given over to nothing but a plant that’s dying slowly and with dignity. Others can’t stand that and line everything up like a library that’s about to be inspected.
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Both camps have strong feelings and neither has converted the other in about three years of trying.
Where we’ve all landed, eventually and a bit reluctantly, is that it’s the wrong shape for a small room and the right shape for basically everywhere else.
It reads as heavy even when it’s half empty, so a narrow hallway or a boxroom just makes it look like it’s elbowing the walls apart. Give it an actual wall, ceiling height if you can manage it, and it stops looking industrial and starts looking like it was there before the rest of the furniture arrived, which is oddly the whole point.
The legs matter more than anyone expects until they’ve watched one rock gently every time a book gets pulled from the top shelf. Get the ones with proper levelling feet or accept you’ll spend a Sunday afternoon on the floor with a folded beer mat, we’ve done both and only one of those Sundays was fun.
So the industrial bookcase went from something we mocked to something half the team owns, which is either growth or just what happens when enough of us run out of wall space and stop having principles about it.
