Home » Home & Style » Antiques & Collectibles » Shaker Furniture, Part II: Faith in Form

Shaker Furniture, Part II: Faith in Form

© Barbara Nicholson Bell

Shakerism peaked in the decades before the Civil War, as America industrialized and the country expanded west. The religious revivals that had brought many converts to Shakerism lost momentum. Fewer people found the Shaker way of life appealing. Communities began to close in the late 1800s, with one or two surviving into the mid-20th century. Its fundamental belief in celibacy and equal-but-separate duties meant that the population was not self-perpetuating. Although the adoption of orphans had been a successful strategy in earlier years, this proved nonsustainable, perhaps because other options existed for orphans after the Civil War and the opening of the West.

It is within this pre-Civil War period, consequently, that the best of Shaker furniture design was created. The Shaker communities that existed into the 20th century have been transformed into museums and centers for scholarly research. They seek to preserve the buildings, farm implements and furniture left behind when the communities closed. Links to these museums are listed below. In addition to the museums, many fine craftsmen are reproducing Shaker furniture and accessories.

Shakers emphasized function and quality, believing that these were an extension of their spirituality. Their buildings, well constructed and efficient, were spartan but pleasing in their simplicity. They exhibited innovative architecture, striking in its symmetry and utility. Tools and vehicles were strikingly "modern" in design. Technology was readily adopted and applied to their tasks. The familiar flat broom is an example of Shaker inventiveness which resulted in business success. Markets soon developed for Shaker products. Success in business and farming sustained the communities through the hard times after the Civil War. Perhaps if the Believers had also embraced marriage and childbearing, they could have survived well into our present times.

The donated household belongings of the first members furnished the early communities. These were insufficient to equip their dwellings and meeting houses as the membership swelled between 1788 and 1800. Unable, had they wished, to purchase the necessary furnishings, the early Shakers preferred to supply their own needs as much as possible. Their social and religious ideals found immediate expression in a vigorous industrial program. Within ten years, brick shops, chair factory, tannery, and blacksmith shops were turning out barrels, hats, whips, hoes, harness, shoes, nails, cloth and clothing, and garden seeds and brooms.

The craftspeople of this busy era were not content to reproduce the European-inspired 18th century furniture of New England with its highboys, canopy beds, cabriole legs and shell carvings. Nor were they happy with the awkward, bulky farm furniture of the period. The Shakers freed their furniture from all semblance of ornament and discarded all values in design that related to surface decoration. Light stains and varnishes replaced the heavier stains and paints of the period. Veneers of bay wood, mahogany, and rosewood did not cover the natural pine and white birch of the local communities. All of these affectations represented "worldliness" and even, "adultery". The Shaker appreciation of natural craftsmanship left the beauty of the wood itself unspoiled and unconcealed.