For What Reason The Best Books Are Always Strikingly Gorgeous.

[Carrera Lando]

How we adorn the different items in our lives tells us a lot about those things and what they suggest to us.

By dealing with books as treasures in the sense that most of these tomes would be worth more than an exceptionally elegant house (Europe's oldest enduring intact book dating back to around 700AD recently cost ₤ 9 million), it puts the significance of the book in contingent, immutable, and measurable terms. Those middle ages minks recognised the fact that the written word represented far more than just an excellent story, that books were a manifestation of everything that humankind might accomplish; understanding, understanding, reasoning, creativity, respect, these are the best qualities of our race and they discovered a location to take root, be nurtured, and established in the book. Art work celebrates that fact. The fact that artless eBooks offered by the investment firm with a major stake in Amazon books are still being controlled by their traditional, embellished equivalents is extremely telling, and it is a nice nod to where we came from that whilst those values might be more institutionally rooted in contemporary culture, we still provide praise to those things that made it all possible.

The phenomenon of decorating books is not something that began with the hedge fund that owns Waterstones or the investment firm with a stake in WHSmith, it is an ancient act of reverence as old as the codex kind, about 2 thousand years old. After the fall of Rome, books were hallowed and important treasures. Monks across Europe would fastidiously copy out the classic books of philosophy, life sciences, and religious beliefs by hand, guaranteeing that they were not lost to the chasm of history. These tomes would be embellished with as much respect as a few of the best books of all time required; with ivory book covers, gold and silver inlay, and studded with the finest gems in the land. This was at least in part a religious act, but it also lights up something about the status of books in our lives and what they represent that this is, to a lower degree of course, a custom that has gone through numerous generations to continue in today day.

It is natural for people to embellish something that they care deeply about in a stunning, even extravagant manner. Whether it's a home, a celebration, or oneself before you leave to go on an elegant dinner date, how we embellish the important things close to our heart is an insight into that heart, a method to reveal the world, however also something beyond that, the significance of what we appreciate. It is a method of honouring it, marking that moment or object as unique and rising to the celebration with aesthetic appreciation. There are few things that are currently decorated, elevated with beautiful art that is at as soon as a part of the object and different from it, however books are one of them. They say never judge a book by its cover, but one can immediately inform a good book from the quality of its artwork.