Colours May Vary
Our November Bookshop of the Month is Colours May Vary, an independent bookshop found in the Corn Exchange in Leeds. They specialise in commercial art books and related product, but also stock a range of non-fiction titles, particularly on the environment and nature. We chatted to Andy, one of the owners about his book pick-of-the-year, how they choose the books that go on their shelves and their 12th birthday party show, HONK! Want to find out more? Read on!
Photographs by Justin Slee
1. From your website we see that Colours May Vary is more than a bookshop – tell us more about the concept behind the shop, how it came into being.
Colours May Vary is the result of the obsessive jackdaw tendencies of two retail loving people (myself and my wife Becky) and was an idea long before it was a reality. We both studied art & design history, both worked in retail (record shops being a formative experience) and could (and can) often be found crate digging and excavating everywhere from chaotic charity shops to shiny concept stores looking for treasure. I was always more drawn to books (many years spent as a librarian probably helped), and Becky to beautifully designed objects and products (a decade in jewellery design doing some of the work here).
When some of our favourite Leeds shops closed in the late noughties (Habitat, Muji and Borders being the most missed), we found ourselves with nowhere locally to go, and we ended up wandering more and more to Manchester, or London to get our retail fix. The idea of creating a retail space that combined our love of beautifully designed objects, and interesting and esoteric reading matter started to brew. In 2012 we found ourselves walking around an empty space (a former car showroom) in a red brick building on the city’s east side wondering whether we could turn our dream into a reality. We celebrate 12 years in business this year, and, for the last three have been situated in the beautiful Corn Exchange in the city centre. Here’s to the next 12.
2. What’s it like running a shop in the Corn Exchange?
It’s a lot of fun. The Grade 1 listed building is beautiful and stops us in our tracks every day we walk through its doors. There’s a great community too, lots of folks doing wonderful things – plant shops, gallery spaces, posters and prints, independent fashion, jewellery, coffee… you name it. It’s the best place to shop independently in Leeds city centre. New retail units are due to open in the basement very soon, so there will soon be three floors to explore.
Last night, as I locked the doors, the basement was filled with dancers, whooping and careering across the stone flagstones under an undulating purple light, as they prepared for this year’s Light Night celebrations. There’s never a dull moment here.
3. How do you choose the books that line your shelves?
When we first opened, we specialised in books related to what we term commercial art (graphic design, typography, printmaking, etc.). I’d spent years working in art libraries, so having my head in publisher catalogues was second nature. Across time our interests have shifted; we still stock a lot of design titles, but find ourselves increasingly drawn to books on folklore, environmental issues, and nature. We are, like a lot of independent bookshops, tight for space (and we do like to display books cover on), so it’s always quite a careful edit to get the stock balance right.
Selecting is always helped by customer’s recommendations, and there are always those publishers we trust to put out consistently interesting titles. Other than that, it’s reading reviews, eyes on social media, keeping up with publisher catalogues and the foresight of good reps!
4. If you had to pick one book in the last year, what would it be and why?
One book…, blimey, that’s a tough task. Okay, I’m going to pick the one I’ve just finished reading, as it is fresh in my mind and really got it’s claws into me. The book, ‘Bedsit Land: The Strange Worlds of Soft Cell’ by Patrick Clarke is the first in Manchester University Press’ British Pop Archive series and focusses on the first four years of the synth pop duo’s career.
Largely an oral history of the band, the content sheds a glorious (neon) light on not only the duo’s swift ascendancy from art college experimenters to leather clad chart toppers, but also on their innovation, boundary-pushing and vital position in the pop firmament (something I think has previously been missed). What the book also does wonderfully well is flesh out moments, histories and locations through memory. A particularly vivid picture is painted of the singular nature of the Leeds art school environment of the late ‘70s for example (Marc Almond and Dave Ball met while at Leeds Polytechnic) and is brought to life through the voices of students and tutors in attendance at the time. Elsewhere, the grit and sleaze of ‘80s Soho and the vibrancy and debauchery of Studio 54-era New York get the same treatment.
Much more than a mere band biography, this book gets you under the skin of the people involved, of the places they worked, and of the times they lived in. It also leaves you wanting to listen to their recorded work (I actually went out at the weekend and picked up a second-hand copy of the debut album ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’, in Farsley – the crate digging never stops).
5. And finally, do you have any exciting plans for the shop in the coming months that you would like to share with us?
In November we celebrate our twelfth birthday, and as part of the celebrations we have co-curated a group show with local art scamps Mek Summat that champions the bumper sticker! The show is called HONK! and brings together work from 25 artists, who have each created incredible artwork that harks back to the golden age of the bumper sticker. We’ll have big versions all over our walls and actual stickers that you can buy! On the launch night (the 14th November bumper lovers) we’ll have beer, music and adhesive-backed loveliness and we hope to raise a chunk of money for local asylum and refugee charity PAFRAS. HONK!