Here's the perfect lazy susan for every task. Our hours are Every Day: 11am - midnight. Lazy Susan Campbell opening 8/8 Located at Local Kitchens at 1640 S Bascom Avenue. Our hours are Sun - Wed: 11am - midnight, Thurs - Sat: 11am - 2am. Once you try a lazy susan, odds are you'll find all kinds of places and ways to put one (or five!) to use. Lazy Susan Palo Alto now open Located at Local Kitchens at 369 California Avenue. Some cabinets-especially corner cabinets-come with built-in lazy susans to enable you to reach what's in the back of an especially deep cabinet.
It makes it so much easier to grab that spice jar or hair serum, without having to pull out everything else in the cabinet to reach it. An early use of the lazy Susan in the United States was possibly in 1891 when Elizabeth Howell of Missouri was granted a patent for a self-waiting table. The concept is centuries old, and first used predominantly to serve food at a meal-the dishes or condiments were placed on the tray at the center of the table, and everyone could spin it and reach the items they wanted.īut now, lazy susans are more often employed to make the most of every inch of storage space in cabinets, pantries, and shelves. But a lazy susan can do so much more than keep you from forgetting that you already have sesame oil.Ĭheck out all the ways you can use this tool-both in your cabinets and in your daily life.Ī lazy susan is a round tray that rotates on a set of bearings, allowing you to easily spin it and reach whatever's on the tray from any angle. It's the perfect storage workhorse, allowing you to easily see everything that's in a cabinet or on a shelf, so nothing gets lost in the dark recesses. Want more history? See posts on The History of the Trough Sink, The History of the Farmhouse Sink and The Copper Bathtub in History.Despite its name, the lazy susan is anything but lazy. It is the new centerpiece of the modern dining table-as functional as ever but having undergone a high-end makeover that has designers and homeowners, and those that gather around their tables, clamoring to take them for a spin. Today, this turntable has multiple uses, far beyond its early purpose as a servant replacement. Lazy Susans became so fashionable in the 1950s and ’60s that they were deemed kitschy in the decades to follow, but the 21st century has seen them reinvented and in demand once more. At the same time, the domestic service sector collapsed and the post-war Baby Boom led for to a demand for convenience. We conclude that her roots are in Europe while she came by her name in America, where she has gone in and out of style.īy 1918 Century Magazine had already dismissed the lazy susan as out of fashion, though she would become very popular again in the 1950s, after George Hall, a soy sauce manufacturer, and partner in popular San Francisco-area Chinese restaurants, reintroduced the tabletop turntables in his restaurants. While the identity of the original Susan remains a mystery, her namesake lives on. Webster’s Dictionary added the term in 1933. She can be seen, but not heard, nor can she hear, she simply minds her business and carries out your orders in a jiffy.” In 1912, The Christian Science Monitor referred to the lazy susan as “the characteristic feature of the self-serving dinner table,” and a 1917 Vanity Fair ad depicted Ovington’s $8.50 mahogany “Revolving Server or Lazy Susan.” Proclaimed the ad: “$8.50 seems an impossibly low wage for a good servant and yet here you are Lazy Susan, the cleverest waitress in the world, at your service!” Keep in mind that WWI was in progress in 1917, and women sought solutions to a shortage of servants. Laurie became the “resuscitator of ‘lazy susan.’” A piece said, “‘Lazy Susan’ is a step toward solving the ever-vexing servant problem. In The Boston Journal in 1903, Scottish carpenter John B. Regardless of who thought to spin the plates, the term “lazy susan” debuted in the press in the early 20th-century. After all, he was the mastermind behind the phonograph, introduced in 1877, and its spinning turntable. Others attributed the name to another Thomas: Edison. It serves many of the same purposes and is a spin-off of this functional piece of furniture. A guest who dined at the President’s house recalled, “By each individual was placed a dumbwaiter, containing everything necessary for the progress of dinner from beginning to end.” Today, some call the lazy susan a dumbwaiter (especially in Britain).
Jefferson’s dumb (or silent) waiters were serving trays with wheels. He brought the concept of the “dumb waiter” to Monticello following a trip to France.
Many people claim that Thomas Jefferson invented it (or at least popularized it in America).