Bay Colony Antiques is proud to offer for sale this wonderful antique Victorian cast iron & oak mechanical dictionary stand. The stand is signed Geo Flanagan on the lower bookshelf which also cleverly serves to lock the legs in place and adjust the height of the stand without the use of a thumb screw. These are much less prevalent than Anstice, Lambie, & Stevenson stands. Flanagans are slightly less sophisticated than the aforementioned maker's but are still a nice piece of historical Chicago memorabilia. The only feature that Flanagan stands lack that the others have is the counterbalanced book rests. When the book rests on this stand are locked into place by the spring mechanism the book rests are stationary. What they lack in not being able to counterbalance they make up for by being much sturdier. The counterbalance plates are nice at certain times but can be a pain at others like if you’re flipping back and forth quickly through a book and the stand keeps repositioning itself. The angle of the book rests can be easily adjusted by turning the lower screw in our closeup image of the mechanism. The upper screw is used to adjust how far apart each oak bookrest is from one another. Each oak bookrest plate measures 8” wide x 12” tall and their outer edges are 21” apart at the closest setting and 23” apart at the widest setting. Sometimes the bookrests have a paper label affixed to them, but that seems to be more often when a less desirable piece of wood is used for the bookrests opposed to the beautiful quartersawn Oak on this example. The mechanism operates is intended, and overall the stand is in very good condition with our only notes being light paint loss on the metal & some light degradation of the finish on the edges of the book rests. When the stand is at its shortest setting the top corner of each book rest plate is about 30” off the ground which is good to use alongside your favorite reading chair. When the stand is at its tallest setting the top corner of each book rests is 41” off the ground. The base measures 20 1/2” wide x 20 1/2” deep.
