Coffee Table Books

How to Choose a Coffee Table Book

The best coffee table books add something to a room before they're opened, then reward a slow read once they are. Start with the person and the room, not the bestseller list.

Start With What They Love

Subject first, then size. A collector of anything has a book waiting for them.

• Photography: David Yarrow's career collection runs from the 1986 World Cup to the American West, and National Geographic's The Photographs pulls from the magazine's archive, the Afghan girl and the Titanic's sunken prow included.
• Fashion and jewelry: Dior in Bloom explores the motifs and inspirations behind the house's designs, and The World of David Morris covers the London jeweler founded in 1962, with new photography and commissioned gouaches.
• Food and entertaining: Steak House follows Eric Wareheim across the country from Peter Luger's to Bern's, Rick Martínez's Mi Cocina covers 100 dishes from Mexico's seven regions, and Karen Mordechai's Sunday Suppers and Mariana Velásquez's Revel are about having people over.
• Design: Frida Ramstedt's The Interior Design Handbook explains the rules behind a room that works.
• Cocktails and the bar: Meier's Art of Cocktails, first self-published in 1936, carries more than 300 recipes, and The Encyclopedia of Cocktails answers how the Old-Fashioned got its name.
• Travel and food history: Do It in Paris maps 450 places most visitors miss, and Enrique Salmón's Kincentricity explores more than fifty foods from American Indian traditions.

Look-Through Books and Read-Through Books

Every good stack needs both. Look-through books, the photography and fashion volumes, get picked up by a guest with a drink in hand and opened to any page. Read-through books, the cookbooks, cocktail histories and design guides, get carried off to the sofa and read cover to cover.

A table with only look-through books feels like a lobby. A table with only read-through books feels like homework. We'd put one of each on top and let the rest of the stack do the talking.

Size and Placement

Large coffee table books, roughly 10 to 15 inches tall, need a wide ottoman or a long console to sit flat and read well. On a small table, one oversized title and a couple of slimmer ones beat three giants. Slipcased editions like The World of David Morris look best with the case on and a corner of the spine showing. A dust jacket earns its keep on a shelf but slips around on a table, so we'd take it off and keep it in a drawer for the day the book moves to a shelf.

Coffee Table Book Decor: Styling the Stack

A stack only looks collected if it's built that way. A few rules keep it from reading like a waiting room.

Stacking and Displaying

Work in threes, largest on the bottom, with the top book turned slightly off-square. Anchor the stack with one object, a piece of stone, a brass box or a candle, and leave the cover of the top title showing. Our bookshelf styling rules cover the shelf version of the same idea.

For the object, look to our Curiosities case or the decorative goods in housewares. Stone, glass, ceramic and metal against paper is what makes a table look lived with.

Swap It With the Season

Change the top book when the room changes. A cookbook stack comes forward before a dinner party, the photography books take over in winter, and nobody has to rebuild the whole table to make it feel new.

Coffee Table Books as Gifts

A good coffee table book is one of the few gifts that gets better with time. It gets shelved, lent and pulled back out for years.

Matching the Book to the Person

• The traveler: National Geographic's The Photographs, at $55.
• The one who dresses with intent: Dior in Bloom, or The World of David Morris for someone who notices jewelry.
• The host: Sunday Suppers or Revel, paired with something from the bar cart.
• The cook: Mi Cocina for someone who travels by recipe, or Steak House for the friend with opinions about a ribeye.
• The new homeowner: The Interior Design Handbook, which is cheaper than a consultation and a decent place to start.
• The big gesture: David Yarrow's collection, 150 images in one large-format volume.

Every purchase leaves in High St. branded tissue and one of our premium bags with cord handles and a gold-foil logo.

When the coffee table question turns into a whole-room question, our Design Studio, CityBeat's Best Interior Designer in 2024, can take it from there.