The Shaker aesthetic reconsidered.

To date, much that has been said or written about the Shakers and their material culture errs in one of two ways. On one hand, classic Shaker furniture is typically mischaracterized as "simple." (1) In fact, it is not simplicity that epitomizes the Shaker style, but sophistication, albeit sometimes manifested in very subtle ways. On the other hand there are those who exaggerate the historical importance of the Shaker experiment and the furniture they made by suggesting a direct connection between the Shakers and twentieth-century design. So far and for the most part, however, assumptions and claims of influence lack solid evidence and remain unconvincing. (2)

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Luckily, an aesthetic appreciation of classic Shaker style does not depend either on its historical significance or its influence on later designers and design movements. Instead, a purely empirical approach works well. Antiques dealers and collectors naturally use their experience to form judgments about the relative rarity and quality of objects. Before thoroughly examining an object to determine its authenticity, integrity, and state of preservation, the savvy dealer or collector makes an instinctive assessment of its merit by asking himself, "Is this aesthetically successful," "to what degree," and "why" (or "why not")? With greater experience and the handling of more and more objects come better judgments and greater confidence in those judgments. From that perspective, what follows is an examination of five exemplary Shaker objects that focuses on the specific attributes and design elements that epitomize and define the Shaker style.

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The cherry drop-leaf table (Figs. 1-1c) from the Church Family of the New Lebanon, New York, community, (3) is a study in Shaker concentration on craftsmanship, and, even more strikingly, geometry. The overall composition is thoroughly consistent, apparent especially when the table is viewed from the drawer end with the leaves in the down position (see Figs. 1, 1a). The drawer face is an isosceles trapezoid, visually accented by its thumbnail molded edge and centered by a typical, precisely turned while deliberately understated, Shaker knob. Progressing outwards, and in parallel, are the edges of the square sections of the legs and, significantly, the edges of the leaves themselves, achieved by creating thin parallelograms of negative space between the leaves and the table frame. Even more obviously geometric are the legs, which, except for the transition point to square at the top and the extremely subtle accelerated taper at the very bottom, are sections of very long cones. This is reductive Shaker design done to the most exacting New Lebanon standards.

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