Hanging some dulcimers as a wall display
General mountain dulcimer or music discussions
I like Wally's thought of angled bookshelves.
I must dissent, not that Wally (and Dusty before him) don't have good ideas on the broad topic of dulcimer displays. But I'm specifically asking how I might best arrange five dulcimers to tell "The Story of the Dulcimer" visually, as Ralph Lee Smith did with three instruments in the cover illustration of the first edition of his excellent little book on that subject. I own a couple of "missing links" in the sequence he has documented, there and in the revised 2nd edition, as well as his long-running series in Dulcimer Players News. And I've specifically proposed a fan shape, over a wide doorway, in a large room with an unusually high ceiling.
Nearly alone in Dulcimerica, you (Strumelia) have actually seen my collection -- six or eight of them -- some years ago at an Antietam Early Banjo Gathering. Other dulcimer fans who have seen most of them include Roddy Moore; the late Ralph Lee Smith himself; and most recently John Hallberg and Ken Longfield (together), alongside John's large and growing museum collection. For this proposed, historically informative wall display, none of the five is newer than 1963. Three of them date from the early to mid-19th century, including a fine German-American zitter (regrettably called a "scheitholt" by most of our community). All are now in playable, gently restored and unmodified condition; so I might, very occasionally, want to take one or two down to play, or to show someone. They are in my residence, not a museum.