This is the perfect introduction to Shaker furniture design.This concise book surveys distinctive furniture styles produced during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Shaker communities of New England, Kentucky, and Ohio, with over 130 beautiful full color images. Free-standing tables, chairs, boxes, desks, built-in cupboards, and cases of drawers are shown. The text provides an introduction to nearly twenty Shaker communities, their known cabinetmakers, identifiable traits of furniture designs unique to specific Shaker communites, and the characteristic colorful paints and stains used to finish them.
English founder Ann Lee and a small group of followers brought the Shaker faith to New England in 1774. Dedicated to a simple, communal lifestyle outside of society, this movement spread throughout New England and the Midwest during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The furniture produced by Shakers for their own use was beautiful in its simplicity and functionality. 300 historical and modern photos provide a visual tour of masterpieces of Shaker furniture and an introduction to the faithful artisans who produced them. Among the items displayed are benches, blanket chests, cases of drawers, chairs, counters, cupboards, desks, rockers, stands, tables, wall clocks, workbenches, and work tables. This book will be a treasure for all who enjoy, own, and create handmade furniture.
Reaching an apogee of 6,000 members in the years just before the Civil War, the Shaker movement was the most extensive, enduring, and successful utopian society ever established in America. Leaving Manchester, England, in 1776 to avoid persecution, the Shakers crossed the Atlantic and during the next 50 years established 19 villages from Maine to Kentucky. The Shakers were guided by the principles of utility, honesty, and order in both their work and worship, and this belief system influenced the physical expression of the goods they produced for use at home and for sale outside their communities. This lovely book presents a wide array of extraordinarily fine examples of Shaker furniture, household objects, textiles, religious drawings, and items made to sell to the world’s people” (non-Shakers). The book’s expert contributors discuss Shaker design in relation to the furniture they constructed, the products they sold, their gift drawings and spirituality, and their rejection of American Fancy design. The book also considers the powerful inspiration Shaker design has provided for diverse modern and contemporary designers, including George Nakashima, Roy McMakin, Thomas Moser, and Scandinavian furniture makers.
