It's been quite a while since we covered any sort of library furniture here at The Private Library. Accordingly, we thought we might stray a bit from our usual fare to celebrate that unsung hero of many a private library, the bookend.
Even the largest and best organized private libraries occasionally have need of a bit of extra support when a row of books does not quite fill up a shelf. One could, of course, simply stack books up vertically against the last book on the end, but that is rarely attractive and, quite often, not particularly effective (since the books in the vertical stack frequently slide out of place). A bookend, being of single-piece construction, is much more likely to keep that row of books from toppling over. Moreover, if one avoids the purely utilitarian bookends (upright metal stands and the like), bookends can add an attractive decorative touch to the otherwise lonely end of one's not-quite-filled bookshelf.
We thought it might make things more interesting if we could locate bookends appropriate to one or more of the topics that we've covered over the past 18+ months. Herewith, what we found. (To preserve the thrill of your hunt, we deliberately have not identified the sources of today's images. You might want to begin your search, though, at Google Images....)
One of the earliest genres that we covered, the western, has given rise to all kinds of bookends, but we were especially enamored of these bookends, which sum up the genre in a minimalist sort of way:
We've also covered the literature of a number of members of the animal kingdom here at The Private Library, though we have yet to cover the literature of the order Anura:
Our recent series on archaeology could be tied to any number of decorative bookends, including those with an Egyptian theme (such as Bastet, depicted below)...
...as well as those with an Asian theme:
Our posts on space travel also could be represented by any number of decorative bookends, such as these armillary bookends...
...or the globe bookends depicted below:
Folks interested in the writing life have any number of bookends from which to choose...
...as do folks interested in humor:
Actually, Laurel & Hardy come in more than one style of bookends:
Finally, all you fans of horror, mysteries, detective fiction and the like might well find find the pair of bookends below particularly handy....
This brief survey, of course, does not even begin to cover everything that's available. A diligent search will uncover many, many more such examples....
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