The Complete Handbook of Easels

Chapter 1: Understanding Easels

An easel is a free-standing or wall-mounted frame designed to hold and display a flat or semi-flat surface—typically paper, canvas, a whiteboard, a flip chart, or a presentation board—at an angle that makes it visible to an audience or allows an artist or presenter to work on it comfortably. The surface itself may be blank, pre-printed, or interactive. What matters is that the easel's job is to hold that surface stable, at a specific angle, in a given space, while allowing the person using it to access and work with it or the people viewing it to see it clearly.

This is simpler in theory than in practice. A easel must balance three competing demands: it must be stable enough that the surface doesn't tip, wobble, or move unexpectedly during use; it must support the weight of the surface and any materials on it without failing or bending; and it must fit the physical and practical constraints of the environment where it's used. A classroom easel that's lightweight enough to move between rooms needs different construction than a studio easel that sits in one place for weeks. A portable tripod that a consultant carries to client sites needs different materials and locking mechanisms than a wheeled floor-stand that lives in a corporate training room. The stability requirements for a flip chart in front of 50 people are not the same as for a tabletop sketching stand in a quiet studio.

Professional and serious-hobbyist users encounter easels