Sunday 20 October 2013

The Home Library of Jay Walker October 20 2013

Welcome to the home library of Jay Walker.  He made his fortune by founding Priceline.com, and instead of buying a football team and a bunch of fancy cars, he built this library as well as starting Walker Digital.  (Actually, I don't know for sure if he has fancy cars or not).

Walker's house was constructed specifically to accommodate his massive library. Walker said to architect Mark Finlay, "Think of it as a theater, from a lighting and engineering standpoint."  He even commissioned a custom soundtrack to set the mood for hanging out in the library. 

That there is the original "Thing" from The Addams Family grasping a box of prosthetic eyeballs.  (Scroll down to next pics to see eyeballs, raptor skeleton, and dino eggs from this table up close).

Replacement eyeballs from American Civil War, I wonder if these were unused extras or taken from the dead...?

Juvenile Raptor skeleton, just what every fine library needs.

Fossilized dinosaur eggs, I'm thinking simultaneously "ewwwwwwwwwww" and "cooooool."

Of course here at Secret Safe Books we love faux books, so we strongly relate to the massive "book" by the window.  It is an internally lit 2.5-ton Clyde Lynds sculpture. It's meant to embody the spirit of the library: the mind on the right page, the universe on the left.


Instead of just going to Home Depot for a light fixture, he bought the chandelier from the Bond film Die Another Day and rewired it with 6,000 LEDs. He meets with people from Walker Digital under that lighting, inspiring surroundings, I'd say.


His collection of beautifully bound books is breathtaking, another thing we at Secret Safe Books can relate to,--judging a book by its cover.


It just wouldn't be the same as an e-book,--The Lidless Eye of Sauron on a first edition binding of The Lord of the Rings, made by Philip Smith.


What...?  (Yes, he actually has an original backup of the first artificial space satellite, Sputnik).  





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