SHAKERS
“Do not make what you do not hold to be at once useful and honest”
1774 — present day
“Do not make what you do not hold to be at once useful and honest”
1774 — present day
and dance
“The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing” — that is what they called themselves. In May 1774 nine people from Manchester, led by Ann Lee, sailed from Liverpool and came ashore in New York in August.
The nickname “Shaking Quakers” came from the way they prayed: singing, stamping, a circle dance danced to exhaustion. For the Shakers the body worked alongside the spirit — in the meeting house and in the workshop alike.
Ann Lee's precept
“Hands to work, hearts to God.” Work counted not as a means but as a form of prayer. A bench, a box, a broom were made as fervently as a psalm is sung.
Hence the quality in the places no one will ever see: the bottom of a drawer, the underside of a seat, the back of a cupboard. The flat broom we still sweep with was invented in the community at Watervliet.
The Millennial Laws of 1821, rewritten in 1845, expressly forbade carving, mouldings, cornices and brass handles: things finished beyond necessity do not befit believers.
The Millennial Laws, 1845
Proportion does the work of ornament. Instead of ornament — the asymmetry of the drawers and plain colour: ochre, red-brown, blue against a whitewashed wall. Cornice, scroll, brass handles. Exactly what the Millennial Laws forbade in 1845: finish beyond necessity does not befit believers.
Honesty here is a property of the construction. The joint is visible, the material does not pretend to be dearer than it is, veneering is forbidden. The thing does not depict a luxury it does not have.
The Millennial Laws in the 1845 recension forbade the maker's signature as well: a name must not outlive the work. Beauty was admitted only as a by-product of use. Neither 1821 nor 1860 nor 1887 carries such a ban — 1845 was an extreme even for the Shakers themselves.
The laws forbade the superfluous, not comfort
A ladder-back chair: three slats, turned posts, a seat of woven tape. It is light enough to lift off the wall with one hand.
On 2 March 1852 George O'Donnell of New Lebanon received patent no. 8771 for metal ball-and-socket tilters on the rear legs. Wooden ones had been used before, but they split. An invention counted as a common gift rather than property — yet for the sake of comfort they went as far as a patent.
Three slats, turned posts, woven tape. Not one part that cannot be explained by use. The chair lives on the wall. A peg rail runs round every room: the chair is hung by its back on a peg so the floor can be swept clean.
Swallowtails and copper
The oval box is the central Shaker object. A thin maple band is steamed, bent to shape and drawn together with overlapping swallowtails: the slender points let the wood move with the seasons.
The rivets are copper: iron would have left a rust stain. The boxes were made in nested sets — from thimble to chest, and not one of them superfluous.
Not a single seam is hidden. The joint is the ornament — the only one permitted.
Size № 4
The middle set. The boxes nested one inside another: on the shelf they took the space of one.
The chair lives on the wall
A peg rail runs round every room. Everything was hung on it: clothing, a lamp, a clock and the chairs themselves, so the floor could be swept clean.
“There is no dirt in heaven,” said Ann Lee. Order was hygiene of the spirit. The rail, the built-in cupboards and the module of the room work as a single grid: every thing has its place, and no other.
Common property, celibacy, equality of men and women: the community had Elders and Eldresses alike. Two doors and two staircases led into the house — one for the brethren, one for the sisters.
By the 1840s some six thousand people in about twenty villages from Maine to Kentucky. The community could grow only through converts and orphans.
Two doors
A community that gave up the superfluous arrived at the formula of modernism a century before it: function, module, honest material. Later the Bauhaus and the Danes would state the same thing again.
Museum piece
Today a Shaker chair stands in museums and at auctions, and “Shaker” is the name of a kitchen cabinet front. One living village remains — Sabbathday Lake in Maine, with three Shakers in it. In 2025 Sister April Baxter joined the other two.
The cold beauty of use
Furniture as prayer is not a metaphor but a specification. If work is itself worship, then bad work becomes a sin and a superfluous scroll becomes a lie.
Useful and honest — the only tolerance allowed. Anything that fails either test simply is not made. This criterion outlived both the community and its faith.