Stansberry Construction Advertising Memo Roll Dispenser, Enameled Steel with Chrome Fittings, Reno Nevada, c. 1965–1975

The Piece

A desktop memo dispenser in pressed steel, finished in the deep avocado enamel that dates it precisely to its decade. The body is a shallow tray with a hinged upper flap; a chrome-plated bar spans the back on two riveted ears to carry the paper roll, and a knurled chrome thumbscrew at the side sets the drag. Lift the flap and you find the working end of it — a black rubber feed roller riding a polished steel shaft, and a long tear slot cut into the base plate. Paper came off the roll, under the roller, out through the slot, and you snapped it off against the lip.

The enamel is glossy and largely unblemished, the chrome bright, the rubber roller still supple. It's a small object with an unusual amount of engineering in it: everything is riveted, nothing is molded, and the whole mechanism works exactly as designed.

Across the front flap, in the tight sans serif of a printer's advertising specialty run:

STANSBERRY CONSTRUCTION · 755 Forrest St. — Reno, Nevada · Phone 322-—

History & Provenance

Advertising specialties like this were the mid-century contractor's business card: ordered by the gross, imprinted with a name and a telephone number, and left on the desks of architects, suppliers, and clients who would look at that name every time they wrote a note. The dispenser was chosen because it earned its place — a roll of paper is more useful than a calendar, and it stayed on the desk for years.

The imprint dates it on its own. The number is given as a prefix and four digits with no area code, the convention in Reno before area-code dialing became standard, and the avocado enamel belongs squarely to the late 1960s and early 1970s. 755 Forrest Street sits on Reno's west side, a few blocks off the river — a working contractor's address rather than a showroom one.

Stansberry Construction left no monument to itself. What survives is this, in a shop in the city it was built for.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Local advertising is the most honest record a city keeps of itself. A building gets torn down, a company folds, a phone exchange is retired — and the only thing left carrying the name is the object somebody thought was too well made to throw away.

On a desk it does what it always did: it holds a roll of paper and it looks like something. The avocado reads beautifully against walnut, brass, and warm white, and the chrome keeps it from going soft. Pair it with an onyx pen set and a leather blotter and the whole surface starts to feel considered rather than assembled. For anyone with Reno history — or anyone who simply likes objects that were built to be used every day for twenty years — this is a small, specific, entirely unrepeatable piece of it.

It also still works. Load a roll of adding-machine tape and it will take notes for you the way it did in 1970.