Design Moment: Bookworm, 1993

Any child can draw a bookshelf, and anyone with access to a long piece of wood or some similar material can make one. In the mind’s eye, it’s a horizontal plane supported by two vertical planes, or maybe two solid blocks of some description or brackets holding it up.

That’s why Ron Arad’s Bookworm shelf, designed in 1993 and shown at that year’s Milan Furniture Fair, was such a disrupter. It was originally made in sprung steel – its scale and material fitting perfectly with the loft aesthetic then in fashion.

In production terms, the one-off piece was expensive to make and challenging to install. However, in 1995 it was put into production by Kartell in the less industrial looking, more domestically friendly injection moulded, coloured PVC. The long thin strip is deep enough to take books and coiled into shape, its hollow box-like brackets serve as book ends.

From a distance, when loaded with books (or even when empty), it looks like a wall sculpture. The plastic strip can be manipulated to fit the wall space – either curled to create a curvy wall sculpture or elongated for a more conventional look.