Fresh off the shelf — theguardian.com

In my 10 years in London, I have amassed a collection of more than 450 cookbooks. There are almost as many again, boxed up in a storage unit somewhere in California. I am an avid cookbook collector. They are comforting places to visit, whether cooking from them or not. It was late last year, after a frustrating battle with a particularly slim volume that had slid behind the radiator in the space underneath my stairs, that I decided to install proper shelving for my collection. I solicited the help of my designer friend Max, and the result is strong and solid. The shelf has clean lines that appear to float in the space in front of the wall, suspending the books in mid-air. Your eye goes mainly to the books, which are arranged now by colour, but then it picks up a subtle edge of oak or a line of birch ply in-between the yellows, whites, blues, greens and blacks.

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