Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Estates and gentry income/Private Library
The Private Library
By the seventeenth century, the ownership and display of private material objects was a form of communicating a person's understanding of the world.[1] However, not everyone had the ability to display their worldly understanding in this way. In order to have a library it was necessary to be able to afford to dedicate a space in the home solely to books.[2] Often books were simply stored in closets or chests, just like any other object, because there was not the space or money to dedicate solely to books.[3] Therefore, book collecting and the displaying of books within the domestic sphere solely belonged to the gentry and aristocracy.
Display of books as familial inheritance and wealth became much more prevalent in the seventeenth century.[4] It took time and money to build a collection and therefore was seen as important to display in a formal or public part of the house. Open shelves were the most common form of library furniture and as books were displayed spine out, more attention began to be put into the binding, and particularly the spine of the book.[5] The bindings became more durable and the accents became more lavish and decorative.
The arrangement of books was particularly important in portraying a renaissance attitude that highly regarded and valued intellectualism. Most often, books were organized according to subject.[6] Such organization was convenient when trying to find a book in a library that was crowded and perhaps had books piled on top of one another. More than anything, the library-- its architecture, layout and classification was an emblem of status: "the library had a public role as an emblem of a family’s education, authority, wealth, and virtue".[7]