Art Bookshop

A Bookshop at the Fair

In partnership with Papercup, we've brought a bookshop onto the fair floor, with a dedicated area from Phaidon Press and Thames & Hudson, two of the biggest names in art publishing.

Papercup is based in Beirut, in the Mar Mikhael neighbourhood. It's been named one of the best art and design bookshops in the world, and anyone who's spent time in it will tell you why. Shelves of art, architecture, photography, and design books, the kind of place you go in for one thing and leave an hour later with three.

Here's why we wanted it at the fair.

A book gives you the context a wall label can't. The art on our stands is contemporary, living, being made right now. A book on Matisse, or a survey of postwar sculpture, or a monograph on a movement, gives visitors the history behind it. It puts the work at the fair into a longer conversation. You don't need to know art history to enjoy the fair, but if you want it, we think it should be there.

It's also about price. Not everyone walking round the fair can spend £500-£10,000 on a piece of art that day. Most people can spend £25 on a book about the artist, or the movement, or the medium they're curious about. That's still a way to take something home. Still a way to go deeper into an area they're intrigued about.

Practically, it's a good use of the floor. A stand-sized space, filled with something genuinely beautiful to look at and pick up, does real work for the fair. It slows people down. It gives them something to browse between galleries. And it adds a bit more curiosity into the room, which is really the whole point of the fair in the first place.

One small ask. A bookshop like this, curated by hand, book by book, are a labour of love. It's not a warehouse. So if you fall for a cover and photograph it to find a pound off on Amazon later, you've missed the point slightly. Buy it there, that's how bookshops like Papercup keep existing.