Spirit Board & Planchette

A talking board printed on a warm birch panel roughly thirty by forty centimetres, set in an antique-style typeface: the full alphabet arranged in two sweeping arcs, numerals beneath, and the words that have accompanied every version of this object since its invention — YES, NO, and GOODBYE. A heart-shaped planchette, fitted with felt glides on its underside, is included to move across the surface. The talking board was patented in the United States in 1890 as a parlor novelty, and rode the wave of the spiritualist movement into a fixture of the séance craze that followed through the early twentieth century, showing up in countless parlors long before it ever reached a shelf like this one. It has carried a reputation for both warning and delight in roughly equal measure ever since, blamed and beloved by turns, though this reproduction makes no claim either way — it is simply the object itself, faithfully printed and boxed. Set it on a flat surface with at least two pairs of hands resting lightly on the planchette, and let it move on its own terms rather than pushing it along. Sold as a curiosity — no medical or scientific claims are made of it, a handsome piece of Victoriana whichever way one chooses to read it.