Unique Bookends: 12 Hand-Made Designs by Room, $69 to $179

Most bookends are bought to stop a row of books from falling over. The unique ones get bought for a different reason: someone looked at a shelf of cookbooks, or Alice novels, or architecture monographs, and wanted the ends of the row to say what was on it. That is the whole idea behind the pieces below. A bookend that matches the books looks intentional; a bookend that matches nothing looks like a doorstop.

We have made these since 2011 in Cherkasy, Ukraine — the flat designs laser-cut from sheet steel and powder-coated, the busts and columns cast in solid plaster. Between them the twelve carry about six hundred published reviews. Every dimension and price below is the current product-page figure, and every quotation is from a review, typos included.

Twelve bookends, by the room they belong in

All steel pieces are laser-cut, powder-coated and fitted with silicone pads underneath so they grip the shelf; the plaster pieces stand on velvet. US prices include shipping and import duties. The full range — about forty active designs, from bridges to bulldogs — is in the bookends collection.

Kitchen: bookends that look like they came out of the drawer

Cookbooks are the heaviest books in most houses and the ones with the least dignified storage — a lean against the coffee machine, a pile on the counter. A fork and a knife at the ends of the row fix both. Buyers here are blunt about size, so we will be too: the pieces stand 18–18.5 cm tall, and if your cookbooks are the oversized kind, they will show above the steel.

The Spatula & Whisk pair (£67, black, white or gold) is the same idea for a shelf that wants colour. Tracy put the size question to rest better than we can: "Love them! Sturdy enough for my heavy cookbooks. I expected the whisk and spatula to be larger, but that is on me for not checking the specs. They still look great, are well made and do the job they need to." The COOK letters, the artichoke and the fork-and-spoon are on the cookbook shelf page.

Study and architecture shelf: a building at each end

Architecture books are large, flat and prone to sliding. The Golden Gate is the piece we have sold longest and reviewed most — 96 reviews, 4.89 — and the reviews are the honest kind: people love it for the city and tell you plainly that it is thin steel. The Bauhaus silhouette is newer, matte black, and the one architects buy for themselves. The plaster columns are the odd one out here: cast solid, velvet underneath, and the only piece on this shelf that does not bend.

The Bauhaus pair (£67, 18 × 12 cm on an 11 × 11 cm base) has fourteen reviews and not one below five stars. Tricia: "I love it! I'm an architect and have actually been to this building! I have it hold my architecture books and it fits perfectly on my book shelf!" The Neoclassical Pillars (£90–£98, white, gold or silver) split their reviewers on exactly the question this article is about. craig, an architectural woodworker: "These columns are accurate in every detail. The castings are flawless as well." Sarah, four stars: "They turned out to be rather light (in weight). So they could not be used to hold in place the heavier books we had intended them for. But they are perfect for holding paperbacks and such." Plaster is heavier than sheet steel, but a 17 cm column is still not a brick. For the brick, keep reading.

Library and classics: the ones with faces

If the shelf is philosophy, Greek drama or a run of Penguin Classics, the bookends should be the two men most of the books argue with. Homer and Aristotle are cast in solid plaster at 1.1 kg apiece — the heaviest thing we make for a shelf — and they are the answer when someone asks us for a bookend that will hold a full row of hardcovers without help from the shelf wall.

Kids' room and nature: animals that hold books

The fox is the piece people photograph. Orange steel, mid-stride, 19 cm tall — it has 56 reviews at 4.98, and about a third of them are gifts for a nursery. The cat is the flat one: 7–10 cm wide, so it fits on a narrow shelf where the fox would not. The winter trees are the quiet option for a grown-up room that still wants something alive at the end of the row.

The Cat pair (£67, matte black, 18 cm tall) — YvonneWarner100: "I ordered 3 of these for 3 cat lovers in our family. They all fell in love with them! Superb quality and craftmanship!" The Winter Trees (£67, white or black, 15 cm) — orangepeel: "I bought a set for a gift and it was so hard to part with them, I immediately ordered some for myself." Kim, four stars, about the part we cannot control: "The only problem was that shipping took almost 4 full weeks and it was extremely stressful due to it being a Christmas gift." Order early: US delivery is typically 10–14 business days, and for Christmas we ask for orders by December 10.

Minimal: an X and a pair of braces

For a shelf where the books are the decoration, the bookend should be a single gesture. The X is our only forged piece — solid steel, about 500 g each, black or weathered — and it is sold singly for a shelf with one open end. The curly braces are for anyone who has ever closed a function: laser-cut, matte black, and the most-gifted bookend on this list among people who write code.

The Curly Braces (£67, 15 × 11 × 12 cm) have 55 reviews at 4.98. Elaine: "They look exactly like the picture and have a good weight. Got here really fast too, especially considering I ordered from the US." Julien: "There are rubber pads under the book clamps. They are perfect!"

How heavy does a bookend need to be?

Heavier than you think for art books, lighter than you think for everything else. A row of paperbacks or ordinary hardcovers pushes sideways with very little force; what stops a bookend is not its mass but its grip, which is why every steel piece above has silicone pads and why the reviews that mention sliding are about polished shelves without them. The reviews that mention bending are about something else: a flat laser-cut silhouette is sheet steel, it is light, and if a row of heavy cookbooks or oversized art books is pushed against it hard it will lean. Three ways to deal with that, in order of cost: put the bookend at the shelf wall and let the wall take the load; choose the forged X at ~500 g; or choose plaster — the Homer and Aristotle busts at 1.1 kg each will hold a full shelf of hardcovers on their own. For very heavy books, the Reddit answer is right: nothing beats a bookend that is also a brick, and ours is a Greek one.

Pair or single?

Most designs are sold as a pair. The X, the Winter Trees and the kitchen pieces can be ordered as a single bookend for a shelf that is closed on one side — read the option on the product page before you order, because one of our one-star reviews is from a buyer who expected two and received one. If a shelf has a wall or upright at one end, a single is all you need, and it is the cheaper way to put a unique bookend on every shelf in the house. For the bookends used as organisers rather than decoration — splitting a long shelf, holding a row of magazines, marking a to-read pile — see simple organization hacks using bookends; for the wider gift list, best gifts for book lovers.