Shaker Furniture: Simple in Style, Functional in Form

    Shaker furniture possesses a simple aesthetic quality that has led many to believe Shaker furniture is a predecessor to modern. While that may or may not be true, Shaker furniture's clean lines and lack of adornments give it a sparse look that has become fairly popular. In fact, the only thing most people know about the Shakers is their furniture. While talking with the Interpretation and Education Manager at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Susan Hughes, I heard a charming story about a Shaker who was afraid of being remembered as a chair or table.
    I guess they shouldn't make such high-quality furniture, but if they stopped, they wouldn't be a Shaker. You see, Shaker furniture's style and quality did not come from a quest for aesthetic beauty. It was a byproduct of the Shaker's religious beliefs.
    "The Shakers believed that their act was a work of worship," Hughes said. "They did their work the best way they knew how because it gave glory to God. And part of this goes back to one of their fundamental religious beliefs. They believe they are living in the millennium - the thousand-year reign of Christ here on Earth - and so if you believe that you are living during the thousand-year reign of Christ on Earth, you have a thousand years to get it right. It's not production line mentality. You're not trying to pump out as many chairs as you can. You're going to make that chair the best that you can."
   When making those chairs and other pieces of furniture, the Shakers used the same techniques as other furniture makers of their time. At first, that might be surprising; however, the majority of Shakers first existed outside the group, which meant their outside experiences influenced the way they lived as a Shaker.
    "The folks who came here as Shakers, were Kentuckians first, and if they were a cabinet maker, he had been making furniture presses and knew what made it pretty, and he paired away some of the decorative elements but still kept that same style," Hughes said.
    Keeping the same style often gave Shaker furniture a slight resemblance to other furniture being made at the time.
    "There are antecedents of the Shaker furniture in the Sheraton, Hepplewhite and Queen Anne styles, they just got away from a lot of the decorative elements," Hughes said. "A chair is beautiful because it functions well, and so you pair away all of the decorative items and get back to the simplicity."
    So the Shakers concentrated on function. They made furniture the best way they knew how, and as a result, produced pieces that were high quality.
    "They used the dove tail," Hughes said. "They did use some nails and pegs. They were really making furniture the same way the world's carpenters were making it, but they had more time to perfect the designing and weren't really using any different techniques, they were just perfecting those techniques."
    Perfecting the furniture making techniques resulted not only in well-made furniture, but also in beautiful furniture. Shaker furniture took on a simplistic style where propitiations and subtle details gave each piece its beauty and character. Those characteristics have led many people to study Shaker furniture and believe that Shaker furniture was a predecessor to modern.
    "There are scholars who will agree that shaker furniture is sort of the precursor to the Danish, modern style," Hughes said. "We actually have a group of furniture designers from Scandinavia who come here periodically as a study trip to come and study not just the furniture but the architecture to look at and point out the antecedents of Scandinavian modern style."
    While all Shaker furniture does possess a simplistic aesthetic, it does not look the same from region to region. The Shaker's primary goal when making furniture was that it functioned well, which meant the furniture plans had to adapted and changed for different climates.  
    "They believed that the beauty of any object was in it's utility - in how it functioned," Hughes said. "They're also working with the climate here. The press here is a good example. You'll notice there is a floating panel here set in a case. That enables the wood to expand and contract along with the changing heat and humidity. A similar piece over here from New England is a solid board because they do not have the heat and humidity that we have here."
    Even though the look of Shaker furniture does change from region to region, there is one thing other than simplicity that is fairly universal - it's not very comfortable. The Shakers did not include any sort of padding on their chairs when they first started to make furniture, which means your sitting on just wood. And as I learned, to sit in a Shaker chair, you must have fairly good posture.