Lazy Susan

Lazy Susan in a Chinese restaurant

A Lazy Susan is a rotating tray, usually circular, placed on top of a table to aid in moving food on a large table or countertop.

The Lazy Susan can be made from a variety of materials, commonly plastic, wood, or glass.

Introduction

A Lazy Susan is a rotating platform, normally circular, which helps to move food around a large table or counter top. The Lazy Susan can be made from a variety of materials, commonly plastic, wood, or glass. The purpose of this revolving circular tabletop fixture is to spread food around the table evenly without having to reach for food or run out. The Lazy Susan was commonly referred to as the dumbwaiter before the Twentieth century and was used by many respected historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson. The invention of the technology for the Lazy Susan is widely disputed, as some believe it was an American invention. However, after World War II, it became a fixture in American homes on tables or counter tops as large families began to sprout in the "Baby Boomer" era.

History

The first claim of the existence of the Lazy Susan, or dumbwaiter as it was called then, dates back to late Eighteenth Century Britain at a time when servants were in short supply. A recent auction of a mahogany dumbwaiter sold in London for almost $4,000 in 2010.

• 

  An antique dumbwaiter, or Lazy Susan, auctioned off at $4,000 in January 2010.

Thomas Jefferson’s involvement in the history of the Lazy Susan is disputed, as some believe he was the first to invent the revolving platform technology while others simply believe that his use of the technology as a revolving door-type serving tool made it popular among wealthy families with slaves or servants in the kitchen.

An 1891 American patent does exist by an American woman by the name of Elizabeth Howell, but it implies that the “self-waiting table” technology already existed at the time. The patent reads that the “invention relates to certain new and useful improvements in self-waiting tables of that class in which the movable portion is supported upon rollers and mounted on a central Pivot.” Howell allowed for the Lazy Susan to run smoother and not allow crumbs and other objects to infiltrate the space between the dumbwaiter and the table.

Name Origin and Popularity Increase

Rumor has it that the Lazy Susan’s unusual name came at the time of its invention from the scarcity of servants, of which Susan was a very common name. The first evidence of this technology being called a Lazy Susan is in a Vanity Fair magazine advertisement from 1917, and by 1933 it was officially added to the Webster's Dictionary, meaning the name was catching on.

The boom in large families post-World War II in the 1950s and 1960s also contributed greatly to the success of the Lazy Susan concept, and people started using them at outdoor parties as well. Pretty soon, the Lazy Susan was a staple of the "Baby Boomer" generation. Lazy Susans are still used in present times, although their popularity has dwindled a bit. One variation is the use of the same technology in kitchen cabinets in order to keep pots, pans, and dishes organized and save space.

Other uses

This term may also refer to corner cabinets on which the shelves are mounted on a vertical axle such that items may be retrieved by pushing on the shelves to turn them. This type is usually found in kitchens. When closed, this type of Lazy Susan appears to be two normal cabinets at right angles to each other. When pushed on, the cabinet 'doors' reveal the shelves, which are circular except for the ninety degree cut-out where the doors are mounted.

Lazy Susan is also used to describe any type of small, hand-rotated flat platform, e.g. a rotating spice rack for a kitchen cabinet, a rotating TV/monitor platform, a rotating platform used to aid manual tasks like sculpture, model building, electronics repair and fabrication, etc.. A larger or motor-operated rotating platform is typically referred to as a turntable.

In the context of maintenance engineering, the term Lazy Susan may also be used to describe a device designed to aid artisans in manual activities as a way of avoiding Work Related Musculoskeletal Disorders (WRMDs). The term is also used in a military context to refer to manually or electronically operated weapons turntables.

In the 1982 Disney Film Herbie Goes Bananas, a lazy susan-style chassis was constructed for Herbie #14 which allowed the vehicle to rotate in a 360° turnstile during the film's bullfighting sequence.

Certain editions of the table-top game Scrabble include a Lazy Susan in the base to facilitate turning the board to face each player.

A Lazy Susan featured as the railway turntable in the British children's television show Thomas the Tank Engine (1979).

In the 1998 hit, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Winston refers to the rotating cabinet as a "Crippled Karen".