Stori-Viewer | Church-Craft Pictures | Stori-Views | 1950s St Louis, MO, United States

Church-Craft Pictures Stori-Viewer

United States, 1950s

The original black, bakelite Stori-Viewer was a product of Church-Craft Pictures, Inc in St. Louis, Missouri. Church-Craft Pictures was started by Reverend Henry Kiehl and his son, Reverend Paul Kiehl. The father-and-son business was quite well-known for all kinds of educational and religious visuals and viewers so it’s not surprising they snagged a corner of the 3D market. Before the Stori-Viewer, they started out with the cardboard Pixie-Viewer for which Henry obtained a patent in 1959. In 1966, Paul Kiehl, as part of Church-Craft, would obtain US patent #3264154 for creating cardboard picture slides. That patent # can be found on some of the stereoviews which were produced under a separate company of theirs called Stori-Views — later, Stori-Views would also produce plastic viewers. Both the Church-Craft and Stori-Views companies would eventually become divisions of a larger company that Henry Kiehl incorporated in 1947 called Visual Data Corporation and this company hierarchy is sometimes printed on the viewer packaging. Later stereoviews, like the Chiquita All-Star set from the 1970s, would just carry the Visual Data Corporation company name. Visual Data Corporation would continue operation for several decades, with Robert Kiehl serving as President from 1973 to 1994, and eventually dissolve in 2002.

Primary Material: Bakelite (early), Plastic (later)
Media Format: Card-mounted film chip
Light Source: Natural light
Focus: Fixed
Interocular: Fixed

Black, Bakelite Stori-viewer

As far as we’ve seen, this is the only Church-craft viewer imprinted with the official designation of “Stori-Viewer.” All their other viewers (shown farther down below), were made by Church-Craft for use with Stori-Views but usually were simply referred to as an accompanying “plastic 3D viewer” on the packaging.

Black Stori-viewer: Hawaii Set

Black Stori-viewer: Examples of Separately Packaged Stori-views Sets

Black Stori-viewer: Example of a Stori-view Album Set

Black Stori-viewer: Stori-views Master List Brochure

Black Stori-viewer: Scenic Wonders of America Stori-views List

Black Stori-viewer: Bible Stori-views List

Black Stori-viewer: Rare Baseball & Howdy Doody Stori-views Sets

Black Stori-viewer: Plymouth Automobile

Black Stori-viewer: Cardio-Views | The American Heart Association

Small Plastic Stori-Viewer

This version is the smallest of all the plastic Church-Craft viewers and we have a red and turquoise blue in our collection. There were even matching plastic storage cases for the views! The cases could accommodate both the single-view cards and the double-view cards (most of the earlier Church-craft Pixie-Views were double-view cards) , as shown in the photo below.

Small Plastic Stori-viewer: Example of Separately Packaged Stori-Views

This particular set of double-view stereoview cards shows famous antique cars photographed at Horn’s Cars of Yesterday in Sarasota, Florida. The girl on the front of the package is actually holding the larger Pixie-Viewer while the back of the package depicts the smaller, plastic Stori-Viewer. It wasn’t uncommon for Stori-Views packaging to re-use graphics from earlier packaging.

Small Plastic Stori-viewer: Bible Stories

Bible stories were Church-craft’s specialty. This is one of the special “look-through” package designs and is where we see this smaller viewer actually referred to as a “Stori-Viewer” even though the name is likely not printed on the viewer itself (we haven’t opened the package!). The views are also referred to as “Stori-slides” instead of “Stori-Views” and Church-craft is listed as a division of Visual Data Corporation.

Small Plastic Stori-viewer: Advertising Sample

Here we see Stori-Views begin to branch out into offering branded viewers to companies to advertise their products in 3D. There’s a sample viewer with “Your Company Name Here” and a placeholder address printed on it. It came with sample stereoviews of assorted greeting arrangements. It also came with a few of the regular Stori-Views sets in envelopes.

Small Plastic Stori-viewer: Post Cereal Set

This turquoise blue Post Cereal-branded set was manufactured in Canada for Stori-Views. It comes with matching branded storage cases for the views.

Large Plastic Stori-Viewer

Not only is this version of the Stori-Viewer larger, it’s a bit more creatively designed with its top and bottom indents. It’s also where we see Stori-Views get into their Wonders of the World marketing. We have red and yellow versions of this viewer in our collection.

Large Plastic Stori-viewer: Wonders of the Animal World Set

Here’s another example where there are 2 different viewers shown on the package. The boy on the front of the box is holding the small plastic Stori-Viewer (same graphic from the look-through Bible Stories packaging above) but the viewer on the back is the larger version that’s actually in the box. Another interesting note is the reference to Stori-Views being a division of Visual Data Corporation, similar to how Church-Craft was listed as a division of Visual Data Corporation on the Bible Stories look-through box above.