There is nothing more pleasing to a bibliophile than a sagging bookshelf, metres of old wood buckling under the weight of knowledge.
But a bibliophile who is also an aesthete might find himself or herself in a dilemma — the purity of a horizontal plane ought to be respected. And sagging never looks good on anyone.
Adriaan Hugo, a furniture designer and proprietor of the design studio and store, Dokter and Misses, has the solution — a diagonal bookshelf that works with gravity rather than against it.
His Easy Shelf is a free-standing bookshelf that props itself up in a wide, asymmetrical A-frame. The longer plane is where the books go and perpendicular supports along its length help bear the load.
Made of powder-coated mild steel and Beech, the Easy Shelf is a thing to behold. The contrast between the hard steel body and the tawny softness of the beech legs is striking and the feet are angled so that the shelf sits firmly on a flat surface.
Those who are familiar with Hugo’s work will spot that the Easy Shelf is part of the same family as Hugo’s Easy Chair, Lazy Chair and Easy Coffee Table. In all of these you can see a distant echo of the iconic Rietveld Chair, an armchair made by the Dutch furniture designer, Gerrit Rietveld, in 1917. Officially titled the Red and Blue Chair, Rietveld’s armchair features geometric planes and angles, as well as the primary colour palette that characterised the High Modernist art and design movement, De Stijl.
In Hugo’s Easy range these elements are pared down to their most essential components. Geometric planes and volumes intersect in contrasting shades but as sparingly as possible. The slight backwards tilt in the back and seat of the Red and Blue Chair is recalled by the varying diagonals of the legs of the Easy and Lazy chairs and the Easy Shelf.
When De Stijl art eventually gave way to other avant-garde movements, such as Dadaism and Surrealism, De Stilj designers found a home in the Bauhaus. The enduring influence of this German design school on subsequent designers was unprecedented. Even in a small corner of Johannesburg, almost a hundred years after the Bauhaus and De Stijl, the ghost of European High Modernism lingers around Dokter and Misses, the Johannesburg design studio and store which Hugo co-owns with fellow designer Katy Taplin.
In addition to Hugo’s designs, Dokter and Misses stocks its own signature range of designer objects and, although the influence of De Stijl and Bauhaus is visible throughout, their overarching design aesthetic might be better described as Bauhaus after an earthquake (or at the least a raucous party).
The subtext of chaos in the designs of Hugo and Dokter and Misess is, paradoxically, controlled and sensible and never lapses into scruffiness. You will not have to take out a spirit-level to install your Easy Shelf at home, but you can be sure that it will be straight, in its own way. And, most importantly, it will never sag.