Stop at your local sheet-metal shop: 4" x 12" piece of thin steel, 90° bend, round the edges, let the kids paint them, add stickers, etc. as they wish, maybe $2 each, last forever.
People who read books, live with books, and love books pay $8 each for bookends in an office supply store.
People who spend $300, $400, and $500 on bookends likely don't open books very often. Instead, they choose books by color and arrange them on $9,500 end tables for a photo shoot in their $5.6 million 2 BR/1.5 BA co-op that the NY Times Real Estate section will describe as a "cute starter home" owned by some professional couple, one of whom always seems to have gone to Harvard.
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"As book collections shrink"? Not in my house...
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A number of comments mention the NYPL reproductions of Patience and Fortitude, sold as bookends. If they're too expensive, you can find them frequently on eBay, as well as the similar lions from the Art Institute of Chicago, at lower prices.
I use the Metropolitan Museum reproductions of Assyrian human-headed bulls to bracket my set of Hebrew Pentateuch, in keeping with the ancient Near Eastern theme.
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Some months ago, The New York Times ran an article about interior decorators who face their books' spines inward in their bookcases. Now we have an article about bookends to use when you have relatively few books.
We have lots of books. For the most part, if we need bookends, we use large, unusual rocks we've picked up here and there and place them not at the "ends," but somewhere in the middle, just for relief. My parents' bookends, lovely ancient brass pillars, hold up an Anthony Trollope set on an old chest.
I hope that the people who "have fewer and fewer books" are reading on devices. Otherwise, we're in more trouble than I already think we are.
(But thank goodness for small blessings: Mr. Cotton, the interior designer in Brooklyn, correctly said "fewer and fewer" and not "less and less.")
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Many years ago, the Met sold bookend reproductions of of the NYPL's Patience and Fortitude. They work very well and remind me of NYC very well.
The only ones now are of Assyrian Palace Guards (being the winged lions of the former empire of Assyria).
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They can still be had at the New York Public Library for $135. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia is credited with naming them when he said, ''The people of this city have two cardinal virtues, Patience and Fortitude.'' Something we all need, given the current state of affairs...
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Excellent - lovely to read your follow-up. They are a very enjoyable reminder for me of NYC and such a treasured institution as the NYPL.
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Years ago I bought discarded ugly gray and green metal bookends at a library sale for about a dollar apiece, washed them, and spray painted them off-white. They're lightweight and work well.
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My favorite bookends are from the Metropolitan Museum and they look like the huge half man half beast Assyrian palace entrance statues.
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575$ for a pair of bookends? Really? Beyond embarrassing first world problems.
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Truly. Think of all the books you could buy with $575!
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More inexpensive options would be nice.
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I recently got some really nice U.S.-made vintage retro metal bookends from Etsy for under $20 plus reasonable shipping. Plus, many sellers have former library bookends for sale--they're very sturdy and functional, but if you're into the industrial look and don't mind a few scuffs, they're perfect.
In New York City - a very pedestrian city - real estate affects so very many aspects of everyday life that I find it cringeworthy, crazy-annoying, and finally just frustratingly sad that 'Shopping for Bookends' is considered a worthy article for the NYTimes Real Estate section.
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Get the $16 ones and spend the savings on books.
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Book collections shrink? Not in my house! I’m not shopping for bookends. I’m considering additional built-in bookcases. Then maybe I can stop double-shelving and get some of those piles off the floor.
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The happier the book ends the better...
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