Books and all, from wall to wall

There are books and more from wall to wall at Collectors Treasury Antiques and Bookshop.

This unassuming shop in the Johannesburg CBD may look like any other on the street, but inside its walls it holds many hidden treasures.

Run by brothers, Geoff and Jonathan Klass, this establishment has called the city its home for more than 40 years.

The store, which was founded in 1974, has survived in the very same building since it was opened and is now home to more than one million items.

The store is the largest used and rare bookshop in Africa and the southern hemisphere, which is obvious by looking at the grand eight-storey building that is filled top to bottom and wall to wall with books, records, paintings, antiques and more books.

“The best part of running the store is preserving culture,” Jeff explained why the brothers started the fruitful business.

“What we do is try to preserve the things that document human civilisation, in one form or another – things that are often thrown away.”

Gaining the items that form part of their sizeable collection of books, vinyl records and antiques from a number of sources, it was not a very difficult task to get the store to the state of grandeur that it is today, and now it banks on the success of the trendy Maboneng Precinct less than one kilometre away.

“Particularly now we get a lot more [traffic into the store] because of Maboneng and because there’s a buzz, but I also think that young people have suddenly realised where their roots lie,” said Jeff. “They now, instead of thinking that everything is on a cloud out there, look for the hard copy, so they buy books instead of electronic downloads.”

The store is a bookworm’s dream, a hoarder’s paradise and it offers the widest range of genres, titles, authors and even original leather-back books that are no longer in publication today.

Visit the store for a great read and the possibility of getting lost in a book or even in the store itself.

Details: 011 334 6556; collect@megaweb.co.za