Historic Card Display Device

Earlier this year, we were seeking ideas for new ways to display our greeting cards for sale.  We turned as we often do, to a talented Morris carpenter – David  Birdsall.  Previously, David had designed and built us a kitchen table, a beverage bar, and a small wall of cabinets for the bar.  For our vendors I asked if he could create something from wood, not the usual wire spinner so commonly used for card display in gift shops and bookstores.

The next morning David showed up at our house with a wooden box the sides of which he began to lower to make a stand resembling this.

David told us that while visiting their son in Virginia, he and wife Diana had toured the historic Thomas Jefferson estate, Monticello. 

There they had witnessed Jefferson’s invention of a revolving bookstand, created in support of his habit of reading more than one book at a time.

Jefferson, David reminded us, was a scholar and an avid reader, a man who devoured ideas and the written word, who possessed a voracious appetite for the knowledge shared by others through books. He needed an instrument that would enable him to keep more than one book available and open at any given time.  So he invented revolving bookstand and had one built to his specifications. 

Fascinated by Jefferson’s creation, David Birdsall returned to Morris and responded to my request for a card display device by sharing his duplicates of the Jefferson model.As anyone can easily see, centuries later, Jefferson’s clever device, although a bit unusual in appearance, when re-created by David Birsall, makes a perfect display device for cards create and sold by BenjaminPhotoworks.com.