A Separation of Status

I have one more series of thoughts on the William and Mary Book Stand I recently completed. As I was pondering the finish of the piece I spent a little more time on Chuck Benders site to get a look at how he did the finish. He took a little bit different of an approach than I did, creating a finish that looks aged, but what I began to really notice was the finish pictures he had staged of his piece. Pictures just like this:

Now he also had a picture of the original piece. that picture was staged very similar to the picture of his work.

So I figured I had to keep up the tradition and stage a similar picture of my own. I wanted to personalize it somewhat though. I didnt have a nifty chip carved box or a blue glass vessel to show off in the picture. I thought about it quite a while. I wanted some items that represented me and yet, I also wanted to do something that was an update on the piece itself.

This is a piece with its roots in a different era, a time when books were a status symbol of wealth and affluence. The other day I was sitting in our local Barnes and Nobles with my wife. We each were enjoying a quiet moment together in the coffee shop area, each of us paging through a book.
Im not sure if everyone remembers such antiques as books but they are made of paper with words printed right on the page. The words dont move, light up, or hyperlink to a web page, but they can be highly entertaining. On the whole, I recommend books!
But while we sat there I took my eyes from the print in front of me to take a sip of my lemonade, and I happened to look around me. We were not alone, at least six other tables were occupied and we were the only ones with books in our hands, the rest of the tables were a collection of different digital tablets and readers and one dude with another antique known as a laptop.
In 1711 a book was a status symbol, in 2011, to my sometimes chagrin, the tablet reader is the new status symbol of the literary world. So I borrowed an tablet reader from a friend and used it to set up this picture. For what its worth, Id rather see a book on the stand.
Ratione et Passionis
Oldwolf

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