Interior Designer Finds Hidden Story Among Books

By Kendra Bobowick

What do you do with more than 1,700 books?

Local interior designer Billy Ceglia saw solutions when he requested the many books from the Friends of the C.H. Booth Library, and from within those endless pages he found the answer to a design dilemma.

His books formed the primary backdrop of a library décor he created for a Designers’ Showcase 2007 at Long Island’s Caumsett estate, built by Marshall Field III. Despite the many chapters, he still had no easy answer for his project.

“No designer wants the library in a show house,” Mr Ceglia said. “When you need 2,000 books it’s daunting.” He contacted the library for help.

 “They were happy to oblige,” he said. He also thought that the exchange would be mutually beneficial, which it was. Friends President Mary Maki said that in return for the books, the designer offered the library a donation. Ms Maki remembers her surprise. “We didn’t expect anything; it was kind of them.” Along with the annual book sale’s proceeds, the donation benefits the library.

Throughout the year as they collect books for the annual sale they cull the “best of the best.”

“Those we didn’t use for the sale we donated to Mr Ceglia,” she said.

Faced with his newly acquired mass of books, the designer began to transform them into a background element in what became the only room selected to make the spread of design magazine, Traditional Home. “For the client in my mind the art was more important and books took a backseat to the art hung on them,” he said. The books did not completely lose their function, however. “You could still find The Old Man And The Sea, if you had to.”

Surrounded by empty shelves, Mr Ceglia said, “I knew I didn’t want anything other than books in that space.”

Indicating that every wall was floor-to-ceiling shelves, he described the room’s potential. “Every wall was a statement of books.”

He covered each book in white. “It was a library, so books were OK, but covered with white was an art installation.” From this initial, stark image he reveals more of his approach to the space. “The focus was on art,” he explained. The books provided a canvas to hang black and white photographs, he said. “It was definitely a more artistic edge.”

With clients in mind, he tailored the space to suit a serious collector. “That’s whom I wanted the room to attract,” he said. While the space had to be at least half practical, “so people would understand it,” he said, “It was half fantasy.”

Hoping that the room he decorated was an “attention getter,” he said, “I did the room in all white so people would remember that, and not, ‘Oh, he did the library.’” According to one press release, the library “preserves the elegance of the space while providing a clean, fresh backdrop for the client’s growing collection of contemporary art and books.”

For more information about the Caumsett estate visit, caumsettfoundation.org. Billy Ceglia of Billy Ceglia Designs is a graduate of the New York School of Interior Design who began his career with Ralph Lauren. Learn more about his design work at billyceglia.com. Mr Ceglia was recently awarded Distinction Magazine’s “Designer of Distinction” award for his innovations in the interior design field.