Check marine/RV suppliers for the hardware. "Gallery rails" are used all the time in boats and motorhomes.

I just use Earthquake Putty or Museum Wax, but I don't take my open shelf stuff down that often.

There we go: total bingo, pllllllog -- thank you!!! I have been searching for hours. What is "gallery" about this??? geesh...

This is supposition. It's too late to go looking it up. I believe it's from when "gallery" was the name of an open balcony, like a musician's gallery, peanut gallery, the gallery seating in a courtroom, etc. The safety rail on the open side(s) of a gallery, therefore, being similar to the railing on the open shelf. I first encountered the usage when I found out that the kind of tray I wanted for my dressing table was called a "gallery tray", so then was attuned to it when I heard it being used for boats and RVs. I'm glad my affinity for words was able to help your search!

It's galley, not gallery.

Plllog is correct. Gallery rail is the architectural term for that element.

Sorry, my bad. But googling galley rails also turns up some hits for marine supplies.

oo, that's interesting, anna -- I was wondering why "gallery" wasn't turning up marine applications, which actually seemed like a really smart thing to look into.

I was wondering whether "gallery" might be an eccliastical reference (is that the right word?). I saw some images of wooden mini-baluster-runs, IFYKWIM, that were on the top of pews (apologies, I'm sure these are all technical terms and I'm mixing them up) and I was remembering seeing them a lot in various locales of churches. And as churches and church architecture is so old, I was wondering whether the term might hail from there. Course, one could google its etiology ... but there are so many other things I am not doing at the moment, that's low down on the list.

Anyway, thanks all. There are surprisingly few brass manufacturers. If anyone ever turns up a cast iron version I'd love a url.

Many thanks!

My mother had those on the top of her ex cabinets. Yuck. It just screamed motorhome to me.

If it's going to be only 2 inches high, it won't stop things from sliding much more than some good spongy shelf liner.

Just slap some glass doors with minimal framing over your shelves and make me happy!

sigh.

I know what you mean. But ... there are also some amazing, very old and beautiful pieces of furniture out there with these venerable and utilitarian strips of bling. I have some old secretary, not sure precisely how many hundreds of years old but a bunch, with the stuff moldering along the top. Maybe that's why I'm a little comfortable with it. But I do agree it's not a fantastic solution.

But I can't/don't want to slap glass doors there -- I was wanting open shelves for glass jars of dried fruits and nuts and pulses but I do live in EQ territory. Museum mount won't work; gotta get at the stuff. I don't imagine the rail will hold anything in place for a serious quake, even a seriously small one. But for a little jiggle I do think it will help.

I've seen people stretch bungee cord to hold in books. But the fact is, I haven't really seen any good solutions for this ubiquitous problem at all. I'm open to any and all suggestions; thanks for this fiori. But I don't think I am wanting that. I did see someone selling strips of glass molding you could somehow mount on the bottom of the shelves. But I was thinking that would look too modern. Didn't check price either but I'm guessing that solution might be a little pricey too.

Would it help to know there's a trailer park near me with nary a trailer home for sale for less than 500K?

What's the general look you're going for?

Absence of broken glass.

I have cherry shaker cabinets. These are open, U-shaped shelves set into an alcove above drawers designed as a pantry. There is a bamboo floor. I cook. A lot, I think, though it's been awhile (!). Kids can't seem to detach themselves from my presence even though it seems like they ought to be old enough. You'd think dh would be. Everyone winds up in the kitchen; there's to be a desk-seating area that I imagine will be heavily used. Does this answer your question at all? The house is kinda sorta if you squint, craftsman-esque. A poor man's craftsman (that's a joke as craftsmen houses were for poor men by and large, I think). There's old furniture around. But I like the look of sleek modern. I cannot achieve sleek or clutterlessness to save my life. literally. But I do draw the line at broken glass. ;)

[this was meant to be funny, not snotty - if it reads like the latter, please forgive me. I'm grateful for any help....]

Mobile homes aren't motor homes, silly! I'm talking RVs! :)

You can do it though. A simple A&C style. Avoid spindles! A square rail with square posts. Or maybe frame the bases of the shelves with molding so they are like troughs. Or like they have recessed innards. Bad wording. Read my mind please.

Not snotty at all. So these are already installed? Because otherwise I would have suggested maybe angling the back and then installing it so that the shelves were pointing at a slight upward angle. Might be enough for a jiggle, as you put it. Or have a small lip around the edge of the shelf.

I was poking about for solutions but the best I could find was brass wire. (If you liked that you could use low-E guitar strings or even piano wire for a cool quirky look but it would come off much more modern than you want, I think.)

Don't know much about earthquake-proofing as I live in Jersey and our biggest danger is from decorators like the one in palimpsest's thread.

oopsey.

Yes, spindles are ghastly. I like the idea of wood, but those spindles .... yuckola!

frame the bases of the shelves with molding so they are like troughs or recessed innards?

Sorry -- you mean just get a big hunk of tall molding and slap it on the edge? That seems sad. It's a nice edge.

Or use one of those spindle-rails but replace the spindles with straight sticks?

You wouldn't happen to have seen a photo of what you're thinking about to reference, would you? My ESP is down just now.

Would it look less mobile-home (even though all of our homes are mobile) if I took the thread-ing bases for the brass rods, the brass threading bases that is, and threaded them with wooden, say cherry if possible, dowels?

That might work, eh? Kind of upscale mobile home, which would be internally consistent for life in an EQ zone after all?

DO you have any tall furniture with crown molding on top? Picture the crown around a shelf. Basically use small scale crown molding instead of prison bars.

And again, mobile homes can be quite nice--it's RVs that have the cheesy stuff, along with that dreadful overstuffed furniture and terrible patterns.

Or...get a nice soft counter (if these shelves are above counters) like copper or laminate or walnut and linoleum floor. It'd take more than a 7 foot drop onto linoleum to break MY canisters!

How about a nice ribbon stretched across? Oh oh oh I know! Velcro.

I realize you don't know which ones I'm joking about. All of them and none of them. Would it be horrible to have peel 'n' stick velcro on the base of your canister? I think not. But then I am short and never see the surfaces of wall shelves.

Geesh, I've still got the RVmobile home thing wrong?

I do have tall furniture with crown molding, but the comparison would not be advantageous. One's elegant, the other less-so, to say the least. Inviting a comparison is inviting disappointment.

What sorts of items are you going to keep on your open shelves? I haven't had my built yet, but I'm thinking of putting a subtle lip around the edge of shelves that will house items seeing daily use. For items that are merely decorative, I intend to use putty or other ways to secure them.

I notice that IKEA has racks one can stack plates into, and I wonder whether something like that can be fixed to the shelf? The rack wraps around the stack of plates, so if the rack is stable, then the plates won't go anywhere.

There's something I need to remember since I live in earthquake country. Open shelves look great, but I need to think about what I'm storing there and how bad I'll feel if it crashes off the shelf and breaks to bits while damaging my counter and floors.

Here, for reference, is one of those aforementioned who-knows-how-old pieces that I now realize is this sort of rail up top. I hadn't even really thought about it before...

And here is the space I need to EQ proof:

These rails I show are different, aren't they. It looks like the brass (is what it is?) stiles actually screw into the top of the piece and then have little do-hickies to screw into the top of a wooden railing as finish. I wonder whether I can just buy those screw-brass thingies? That would actually be way easier than the whole rail piece or fittings.

Fori - does that look RV-esque? I don't really think so, but what would I know; it's clear I don't even know what an RV is?!

Please forgive the rampant mess.

Wow, I'm going to have to find palimpsest's thread. I thought you had a few high-profile rampant dangers in NJ at the moment right now too.

I was poking about on the internet too of course and decided I'd just start to call. I just got off the phone with the nicest guy, VP at "brass finders" who seems kind of stoked by the "project" (I know that's a technical term in remodeling circles but it still amuses me). He's going to search around. He's not seen those sort of screw-on-both-ends stiles before. They're probably quite old. I'm guessing maybe an old factory-piece for which boat loads of these things were once manufactured at least a couple centuries back. Other family members have other parts of this once-venerable set with the same sort of stiles. Point being, I myself know of dozens of these pieces of brass; I don't think they were individually manufactured at one time at least.

Anyway, gotta love the internet for locating unique specialists in your specific piece of esoteric whatever. He actually suggested, also, using a wooden dowel for the rail, as I'd mentioned above. His opinion is it would look fine, and I guess that will be my default solution. Maybe he'll be able to find some screw-devices that would enable an unbroken wooden rail (the other solution would wrap brass around the dowel at intervals). But I'm guessing even if he can find em, they'll be out of reach of my means.

Is brass hard to make? You pour it into a mold, right? So maybe, if they exist at all, a small quantity of the things might not actually be any more expensive than the others....

I wonder if a metal shop could help you design something in sheet metal to solve your problem? It seems like with small supports at each 90 degree turn (and maybe one in the middle of the long run), it could be quite sturdy. If you needed to you could have different heights of metal strips on different shelves to accommodate large vs. small containers.

How about this:

Group jars of similar size on each shelf.

Have a gallery/rail at the bottom.

Have a slim, simple rail at the TOP, slightly below the majority of the tops of most of your jars. So when the shaking starts, they are held in place by the two rails, top and bottom, they won't "trip" over the bottom rail. Although if things really start jumping, all bets are off, I'm sure.

To get things off the shelf, you angle them at a 45 degree angle or so to slide them the ample several inches of open space between the rails.

Admittedly not as clean a look as in non-earthquake country, and with your cutout pantry, not as straightforward as if you just slung single wood or wire "dowels" across the shelves (though you could just bend them and put a "post" at each corner) but it doesn't have to be makeshift and ugly.

The top one might even flip down or be adjustable, in case you hate it or you need it to work for different sizes of jars.

I don't live in earthquake country, so there may be flaws in my plan.

Hm... Given the scale, I think Fori's idea of good friction is a good one. Maybe even stick on silicone feet for the glass jars? I mean, it's no great tragedy if the matzah meal can falls, right?

BTW, regarding "galley rail", I would posit that it's a backformation from "gallery rail". Boats have galleys. More galley related stuff is on shelves than probably anything else in a boat. People hear "gallery" and approximate it to "galley" and a new phrase is born. Happens all the time. :)

i too am in EQ territory. i cannot think of a good solution for EQ's with open shelving other than to find attractive containers made of plastic, not glass.

mcmjilly -- mostly glass jars of dried pulses and fruits and nuts. I know glass isn't smart under the circumstances, but I am resigned to smash-age. I really don't like plastic and moreover I have the glass already.

Matzoh can's just a size/place-holder! The commercial stuff gets stashed below decks. But shelves got set at different heights so I was wanting to test out different height jars. The real ones are packed away. I can't wait to have access to those things. I used to have them literally smooshed into two narrow bottom cabinets. It would take me 10 minutes on my knees unpacking and repacking things every time I wanted some brewer's yeast.

This is what I'll probably use: http://www.bplampsupply.com/category/211__5/ ; I'll keep you posted on how it works.

I think that's a good idea to rough up the floor part a bit or line it with that stuff that's basically light-weight rug anti-skid material. I bought some already for another purpose; I'll put it on the shelves too. Though it will be hard to clean around. They're pretty slippery at the moment.

Great looking spindles. :)

Oh, how interesting. Check this out, from dictionary.com:
gallery

GALLERY: 1500, from M.Fr. galerie "a long portico," from M.L. galeria, of uncertain origin, perhaps alteration of galilea "church porch," which is probably from L. Galilaea "Galilee," the northernmost region of Palestine; church porches sometimes were so called from being at the far end of the church. Sense of "building to house art" first recorded 1591; that of "people who occupy a (theater) gallery" (contrasted with "gentlemen of the pit") first by Lovelace, 1649, hence to play to the gallery (1872).

GALLEY: c.1300, from O.Fr. galie, from M.L. galea, from Late Gk. galea, of unknown origin. The word has made its way into most Western European languages. Originally "low flat-built seagoing vessel of one deck," once common in the Mediterranean; meaning "cooking range on a ship" dates from 1750. The printing sense is from 1652, from Fr. gal�e in the same sense, in reference to the shape of the oblong tray that holds the type. As a short form of galley-proof it is attested from 1890. To knock something or someone galleywest is Amer.Eng. slang (1875, originally in Mark Twain), a corruption of western England dialectal collyweston, name of a village in Northamptonshire that somehow came to signify "askew, not right."

I used to work in publishing and I had forgotten all about galley proofs. So in the sense that aliris's kitchen may be prone to movement like that on a ship, galley may be the more appropriate term after all!

Aliris: Who's the rampant high-profile danger you had in mind? We have lots of those. And I think that the cherry dowels might be a very nice solution if you can't make the brass thing work.

How deep are your shelves? Would it be too weird to use return curtain rods? You can get them with up to 8" or 10" return; or order exact custom sizing.
{{!gwi}}
Paso Robles Ironworks makes some nice ones in wrought iron.

Also here (in a variety of shapes, including square hammered which is craftsmanny) and also here. Many options, just google 'return rods'.

In my big earthquake experience (Palo Alto, 1989) shelf rims probably wouldn't have made a difference; cupboards slammed open despite the catches, everything threw itself to the ground with quite a bit of force. Whichever option you go with, I'd use the candle putty too, just for extra safety.

aliris19 What did you decide? I'd love to see a photo. I'm considering this now, though I am sort of resigned to the fact that the big one will result in lots of damage whenever it happens.

I also like annachosaknj6b 's idea of angling the shelves slightly back, but am not sure the items would look great. It might end up with a funhouse type feeling.

@aliris19

This is such an old thread, but I am trying to solve the same problem and have found it super helpful! My epiphany came when I ordered an extra long cabinet pull for our dishwasher...the raised bar will work perfectly on our floating shelves. I'm looking for the right 24" pulls in a narrow, black metal - maybe these: https://smile.amazon.com/Square-Pull-Cabinet-Handle-Pewter/dp/B07DMQHDMJ/ref=sr_1_17?keywords=celeste+square+bar+pull+24&qid=1553643729&s=gateway&sr=8-17

I was looking at the u-shape of your cabinets and thinking that the right cabinet pulls, turned sideways and installed onto the top edge of the shelf, would be available in something close to each of the lengths required to cover the edges of your shelves. Mine are bordered by walls and other cabinets, so I only need the big 24" piece across the front.

cailgirl123

I agree that the big one will take out our spaces no matter what we do, but these little details will save us from a lot of cleanup for the little, much more common ones that happen frequently here! I know that @aliris19 was asking this question 8 years ago and has hopefully solved it by now, but maybe my idea can be helpful to you!

I've been trying to solve this problem, and stumbled across this old thread. Thankful for these forums, and esp to @ellisate for the long cabinet pull idea. Genius! I think I will try this for my own kitchen in EQ country, where I've been contemplating adding a couple open shelves to get clutter off my kitchen counter.

I also just stumbled upon this thread after googling a few oddball phrases like "open shelving gate earthquakes" with no quotes and little luck. Yesterday, I decided that trying to store all of my spices and other immediate-grab cooking ingredients inside secured cabinets is a pain, and I would much prefer to actually use my open built-in shelving for things I want to grab instantaneously.. but the idea of having a bunch of jars and bottles on open shelves makes me squeamish. The cabinet-handle idea is INGENIOUS!! I think I may pair this with small plexiglass/acrylic panels cut to fit the height of my built-ins so that I can slide the panels behind the rails and against the scalloped front edges of my kitchen's built-in shelves to make a removable, clear wall to prevent my tiered spice rack from tossing bottles overboard :D