Quill pens, ink wells and over-seeing owls. Pieces of music and pipes also adorn this stunning library print with exquisite detail and bright colors. Wouldn't this make a lovely dress? You can get it here, for sale by Ownbackyard on Etsy. I also love the styling on this room and the ceramic cat is a priceless touch.

Also, a library print apron in silk with Charles Dickens' Old Curiousity Shop.



















This is too pretty to wear as an apron. Treasure Island, Little Women and The Songs of Sappho are a nice touch as well. But it is Thomas Mann's Joseph in Egypt that really sends me. It is available here from Playback.

Do you call it a Library Print, a Bookshelf Pattern, or the Bookworm's Delight? The lack of established labeling conventions for these prints make searching for them difficult. I'd like to agree on library print.

This greyscale library print on rayon is the loveliest I have seen in quite some time. A library print must have other elements besides book spines and here we have some very active-looking statuettes (art deco ladies in crash helmets with arms akimbo)and some vases, but the real tour de force comes from the addition of the electric fan. The vintage radio too is a great touch, though more muted, its horizontal lines mirroring the stacking of books. But the fan in all its circularity is what elevates this print to greatness.

This terrific blouse is available for sale here, from Adrian Company Vintage, who has posted these pictures on Etsy. While the print is spectacular, and it appears to be a very wearable medium, over-sized 80's blouses can be difficult to wear. I'd pair it with a rather short skirt to elongate the silhouette widened by the boxy top. I'd be tempted to keep the rest of the ensemble greyscale as well.

I have long been looking for a library print book bag. This is a print that has been made into various bags.


















This one was part of last summer's collection by WoodWood in Denmark. I like the placement of the print on this bag and how the vertical books move down along the body on the strap, but that style of bag is difficult for a short woman to wear (the long strap would leave the bag itself somewhere around my knees). The same print was also available last summer in a tote bag at the Morgan Library gift shop, which I keenly regret not snapping up when I had the chance. The closest I've been able to find in this photoprint of some book spines from Thomas Jefferson's Library.



While this bag is reasonably priced and available through the History Channel, of all places,and looks bookishly practical, nonetheless I don't believe in wearing novelty prints that one cannot vouch for or discuss coherently. U.S. History routinely fails to interest me and I often horrify the young Akhenaten with the gaps in my knowledge. Akhenaten, my young Egyptian paramour, can name more U.S. Presidents (and in chronological order) than I can. In order to comply with my own rule about standing by one's novelty prints, I'd have to visit the Library of Congress (the originator of this tote) and read a book or two about Thomas Jefferson just to keep from embarassing myself. And what if I am cornered on the subway by a Constitution enthusiast? For the love of Maude, isn't all of that a heavy trip to put on a tote bag?

Then I got to thinking about U.S. Presidential Libraries. Do they all have gift shops? Do they all put out tote bags? Have I hit a vein of Library Print items? Is this the motherlode?

Sadly, no. I was really hoping for a Nixon Presidential Memorial and Library Watergate Commerative tote bag, but there is no such animal. I would have settled for a Nixon in China tote, but Tricky Dick's library is one of the few without a gift shop. Most of the Presidential libraries are administered by NARA, National Archives and Records Administration. The gift shops are fairly standardized with pens and caps with the particular president's signature or a famous quote, a section for books by and about the president, and a kids section with model Airforce1 planes and tiny t-shirts that say "Future President". Perhaps a section with costume jewelry reproductions of pieces worn by the first lady. The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library and Museum has the New Deal Store where you can pick up mugs commemorating 75 years of Social Security. There are also busts and sculptures of both FDR and Eleanor. But my favorite so far would have to be a 6 inch statue of FDR as the Sphinx. Apparently based on a caricature of FDR it must be seen to be believed.

Men's silk ties with library prints are easily enough found. Over-sized 80s shirts like these, and, at times, vests too can turn up. The first blouse, an Ellen Tracey with a beige background, and the second blouse, is a Pendleton. Unfortunately I am unable to read the spines of the books on either. I really want to know what kind of false library I am wearing. And I definitely want a copy of Don Quixote in there.

In the movie version of my life, I have a library print mini-dress that enables me to blend into an bibliophile environment. I am also an archeologist and a spy, because the film is a 60s spy musical. (Yes, that is an actual film genre, though there is only one film in it: Modesty Blaise starring Monica Vitti, which I recommend heartily. See it right away, the clothes and art direction are thrilling.)

So in the movie version of my life I have a friend who's a lobster. Her name is Dolores and she helps out with the spying. You know, she'll climb up on cafe tables with a microphone and play dead in a bed of lettuce to record a top secret discussion. She also invents new spy technology with her little lobster claws. I recently attempted to explain the movie version of my life to someone at work who looked at me with utter horror. When I said this was only one of my fantasy lives even more horror ensued.

What's so odd about a lobster friend? Poet and essayist Gerard de Nerval supposedly had one as a pet. He is quoted as having said at some point: "Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? ...or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal that one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don't bark, and they don't gnaw upon one's monadic privacy like dogs do. And Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and he wasn't mad."

Perhaps you can do something with these library print shirts, make them into sleeveless dresses or tunics perhaps. The Pendleton is an extra large and perhaps you could use the fabric from the sleeves to add some extra length, or for a matching scarf. You probably have sewing skills. Wear them in whatever fantasy world you wish.

A bookish library print scarf in a gray color way features Don Quixote in Italian. What serendipity. Other books included are Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and Emile Zola's Nana , and a few cobwebs besides. It is available from SmartyPantalons.

While it's too warm to wear this now (NYC broke 100 degrees the other day--I'm still melted), library prints are exceedingly rare so I recommend snapping this one up. It is not cheap, but again, I almost never see library prints, and I am constantly on the look out for them. Constantly.

And in my exhaustive searches I found this other charming bookworm, who, just by reading will be transformed. This mug is available from Booloobird on etsy. I love the caterpillar's freckles and bent antennae.








































Does anyone else remember this ad campaign to get kids reading? It's been many years since I've seen this poster. I saw it first in the lovely Macondo bookstore on 14th Street, which is sadly now long gone (and yes, Macondo is the name of the fictional village in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude). Si no leo me aburro is one of my mottoes. I would like to embroider it on everything. Tea towels, bedding. It says: If I don't read, I get bored.(aburro - burro, isn't that cute?)