tpatz

I was given this light table for helping clean out an old studio. There is a badge on it, but the pic is horrible. Says "posts" and "chicago" and "drafting furniture". It does work and appears to be very dated. Anyone have any idea on age and value? I fell in love with it and plan on putting it in my darkroom. However, would still like to know what I've got here. Frederick Post Company maybe?

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

It looks like a good conversation piece.

I worked in a yearbook and photography company early in my career. We had hundreds and hundreds of light tables to use for galley paste-up, film registration, press layout, etc. but we built them all ourselves.

Meanwhile, I built my own light tables for multi-image slide show editing. I had a 2'x12' bank of three 4-tube fluorescent troffers, mounted in triangles of plywood, the lenticular diffusion removed and replaced with sign plexiglass. We used adhesive foam weatherstripping at 2.5 inch intervals to hold the slides... Illumination was supplied by GE Chroma 50 5000°K tubes, same as we used throughout our portrait processing lab. My manager and I built them one Saturday. They avoided spending several thousand dollars on commercial units from GTI.

tpatz

Sounds like good times! I thought this was simply built by someone on their own when I saw it in the corner, but the badge has a item number and more. I'll have to get a better pic of the badge on it.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

That's definitely a commercial unit with the swivel top on it. They were expensive, but image-conscious businesses bought them for their board artists, draftsmen, and others. My manager had a table top model that was similar to that one. He had bought it before working there, and brought it with him because he had weird vision issues.

All of our home brew tables had special pin-registration blocks on them for aligning punched layers of film or paper.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

Fredrick Post was definitely a manufacturer or drafting and light tables- the company dates back to the early 1900s. The first studio I work in had one- it came from an architect in my old neighborhood who gave it to us when he replaced it with a more current model. We used it mainly to sort negatives and transparencies. The last time I saw it was 1963. Lately, I have seen them advertised on E-bay and Kijiji. One was listed as a vintage piece, an "antique"in excellent condition and was listed at $1,900. A few others, not as impressive in the ironwork were listed in the $300 range. Check out those listenings, there may be some clues as to age.

Yours looks very interesting and functional. Theses old pieces certainly have character and were extremely well build. The make for great conversation pieces in studio offices etc.

Unfortunately, I have no idea of the exact age of your particular unit, however, the cabinetmaking and mechanism closely resembles the old wooden camera stands for 8x10 studio cameras that date back to the 1920s and 30s.

Crazy! The stuff folks threw out that now comes back to haunt us in antiques shops with high price tags!

Ray and JoJo Loc: Florida--Tenneessee

I saw one something like yours that had been converted w/computer screen that the owner of the shop used to show profs. And when not he showed slide-show of old work.

tpatz

Have since been able to find out that it is in fact a Hamilton table. The badge, when viewed in better lighting, reveals that Posts must have been a distributor. It references it as "Distributors of Hamilton Furniture". When I google antique Hamilton light tables, boom....there it is exactly.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

WOW! The company still exists under the name of Hamilton Laboratories. They specialize in industrial furniture and are headquartered in Wisconsin.

Cool!

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

Looks like a home-made- set-up to me!

tpatz

Actually, it's a Hamilton. I've now been able to find several on the web. Don't think that they are that plentiful though. Very cool indeed :)