![]() Placed beside each guest, they replaced curious servants or slaves and were intended to encourage free and unrestricted conversation. Different from the wine elevators he installed on both sides of Monticello's dining room fireplace that led directly to the wine cellar below, they were small free-standing tables whose several shelves held food, dishes and silver. ![]() For one thing, Jefferson's dumbwaiters, while certainly silent, did not move. But dumbwaiters of the twenty first century are a far cry from those hand-crafted European devices. It has saved labor and efficiently solved the eternal challenge of moving objects from one floor to another. Since the late 18th century when Jefferson adopted the French custom of using several of them for dinner parties, the dumbwaiter has joined our lexicon.
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