Thomas Edison Was Here!

At first glance I saw a well made industrial console table. But this table is a little piece of Wisconsin history too. Thomas Edison needed a furniture company to make the cases for his early phonographs, so he invested in the Wisconsin Chair Company. They dedicated their New London Wisconsin factory to manufacturing cases for his music machines.

Our industrial style console table had already had a long life as Edison’s factory floor. The wood has been sculpted by the feet of Wisconsin workers driving silver slivers into the wood. It’s likely Edison himself strode along these planks.

Here’s one of his early phonographs. (courtesy of the New London Public Museum)

While the console manufacturer, Charleston Forge, is currently only making limited edition Edison Consoles, I was told they would construct a coffee table or end table out of this historic floor in any custom size. While our console is number 069, your custom table could be number 1 or even one of a kind.

I found this on the rise & fall of the original Paramount: 

How did a Wisconsin chair company, producing records on the cheap and run by men with little knowledge of their audience or the music business, build one of the greatest musical rosters ever assembled under one roof?….By the time Paramount ceased operations in 1932, it had compiled a dizzying array of performers still unrivaled to this day, spanning early jazz titans (Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller), blues masters (Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House, Skip James), American divas (Ma Rainey, Alberta Hunter, Ethel Waters), gospel (Norfolk Jubilee Quartette), vaudeville (Papa Charlie Jackson), and the indefinable “other” (Geeshie Wiley, Elvie Thomas).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramount_Records

At Stange’s we love uncommon home furnishings that can set your home apart so we had to buy an Edison Console. Come take a gander at all we offer in our 6 floors of showroom.