Arcana: Books on the Arts, Culver City, Calif., today has a soft opening at its new location in the Helms Bakery district, a space twice the size of its old space. Co-owners Lee and Whitney Kaplan moved their bookstore--which specializes in rare and out-of-print books on 20th-century art, architecture, design and photography--from Santa Monica. 
"We're not quite finished preparing our gorgeous new space--designed by Johnston Marklee in collaboration with Landlocd--but we can't wait to share it with you, so we're throwing caution to the wind and opening our doors for the first time on Tuesday," Arcana announced on the shop's website.
"It's easy to see that the last few months have been rough," L.A. Weekly reported. "Since Thanksgiving, the Kaplans have been working 12- to-14-hour days with no more than 10 days off total. Because of the move, Arcana has been closed for 12 weeks instead of four or five as the owners had originally hoped."
Lee Kaplan said the transition had been difficult, due to "the cost of all of our grandiose notions of moving and being closed for an extra two months without having any income. It's been the most stressful thing I've done in my adult life, probably Whitney too, but it's been really amazing."
L.A. Weekly noted that five of the possible new spaces they negotiated for "fell through for crazy, last-minute reasons. Wally Marks of Helms Bakery ultimately wooed the Kaplans into bringing Arcana to its current space."
Kaplan acknowledged that Marks may have had some of Arcana's upscale clientele in mind when the invitation was extended: "There are certain fashion photographers or designers stop by every time they come to Los Angeles. So we could be having a terrible week, but then so-and-so walks in they might easily spend $10,000, and that changes a terrible week to not such a bad week.... If someone comes to Arcana, they're perfectly capable of going and buying an Aalto vase or a $3,000 chair at the Vitra showroom or taking five people out to lunch for $200 at Lukshon."
Ultimately, "hyper-specialization" has been a significant factor in Arcana's "relative success," L.A. Weekly wrote. "The key is that these books are not text-based, and digital technology like tablets and e-readers have yet to evolve to the point where they can reproduce, in great quality, large, carefully printed art books."
Photo by Lenika Cruz