Libraries -- History; Library architecture -- History; Library fittings and supplies -- History
The disposition of the shelues both along the walls and
breaking out from the walls ... must needes proue very
convenient and gracefull, and the best way for the
students will be to haue a litle square table in each
Celle with 2 chaires. The necessity of bringing windowes
and dores to answer to the old building leaues two
squarer places at the endes and 4 lesser Celles not to
study in, but to be shut up with some neat Lattice dores
for archives.
The bookcases, designed by himself, were executed under his direction by
Cornelius Austin, a Cambridge workman. My illustration (fig. 128) shews
one of the "4 lesser Celles" with one of its doors open, and next to it a
"Celle" for students with table, revolving desk, and two stools. These
pieces of furniture were also designed by Wren.
[Illustration: Fig. 128. Interior of the north-east corner of the Library
of Trinity College, Cambridge, shewing the bookcases, table, desk and
chairs, as designed by Sir C. Wren.]
The cases are 11 ft. 10 in. high, and the wooden floor upon which they
stand is raised higher than that of the library. The great depth of the
plinth, which Wren utilised for cupboards, recalls the plan of some of the
older cases, and there is the little cupboard to contain the catalogue at
the end of each standard; but, with these exceptions, there is nothing
medieval about them except their position. On the top of each case is a
square pedestal of wood on which Wren intended to place a statue, but this
part of his scheme was not carried out. The celebrated Grinling Gibbons
supplied the busts which take the place of Wren's statues, and also the
coats of arms and wreaths of flowers and fruit with which the ends of the
cases are decorated.
It is difficult to decide the source from which an architect so great as
Wren derived any feature of his buildings, but it seems to me reasonable
to ascribe to foreign influence his use of the side-walls at Trinity
College library; and his scheme for combining a lofty internal wall with
beauty of external design, and a complete system of lighting, must always
command admiration. In the next example of his library work foreign
influence may be more directly traced, for I feel that the library of S.
Paul's Cathedral suggests reminiscences of the Ambrosian library at Milan.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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