Nose Bookend

Throughout the years, we needed to buy bookends for our books but with very few exceptions we couldn’t find something we really liked. We believed we could make something nice and playful but also fully functional when it came to doing it’s job, supporting books on a shelf.

We aimed to design two complementary objects that not only showcased aesthetically pleasing form, but also served a practical purpose.

Make versions in many different colours and use it as a canvas to create different patterns.

Since the beginning we always wanted to create an object referencing a human anatomical feature. The idea for the Nose Bookends evolved from this concept, leading us to design a pair of complementary bookends, one concave and one convex. The decision to use the nose shape was driven by its distinct, recognizable form and its triangular structure, which made it both visually dynamic and functional enough to hold books from both ends.

We imagined the noses supporting a set of books from either side. We decided to design a pair of noses with a complementary nature in order to emphasize each one’s form. By choosing the human nose as our medium, we wanted to spark a dialogue about beauty standards and the ways in which contrasting elements can come together to form a harmonious whole. The bookends reflect this contrast, where each form serves as a counterpart to the other.

Our background in computer-generated imagery and visual effects played a crucial role in the development of the Nose Bookend. Both noses were digitally modeled in a specialized 3D sculpting program, allowing us to refine every detail. The extensive study of human anatomy from our previous VFX work provided us with a deep understanding of the shapes and structures, which guided our decision to use the human nose as our medium. Our expertise in 3D sculpting proved invaluable, enabling us to precisely model the concave and convex forms in a digital space before translating them into physical prototypes.