Sighted on a gleaming shelf of contemporary design wares — a selective offering of lean, minimalist, simple objects — a Shaker box. Well, why not? And why not in a showroom with the highest reputation for carrying goods of the most advanced, 21st-century taste?
It is no secret that Shaker style is beloved by modernists, that it always looks contemporary, that despite the fact that most historians cannot tell you where the designs and forms came from (Neo-classicism, stripped down?), all agree that ever since Shaker objects where placed for sale in the 18th century, the sect’s products have never lost their appeal. And now there is another compelling element: Shaker is ‘green’, made from local, natural materials, fashioned by hand according to venerated precepts.
Take that iconic oval box: It is beautiful, it feels good to the touch, it always opens, it always closes. “Hands to work, heart to God” is a Shaker credo, based on the teachings of the founder of the group, Mother Ann Lee. Her followers accepted that she could and would form the perfect society, a paradise on earth. At their height in the early 1800s, there were 6,000 Shakers living in 19 communities from Maine to Florida and west to Indiana all living by Mother Ann Lee’s rules of celibacy, pacifism, belief in the equality of the sexes and races, communal sharing, confession of all sins, and living separate from the world.
Everything a Shaker did was done in faith, whether for members of their own communities or for outsiders. The variety of production was extraordinary – chairs, chests and tables, extract of snakehead, applesauce and corrugated carpet and rug whips. They designed the packets their famous seeds came in, and printed the labels too. Everything that was designed, styled and created was well made, and suited for long use. Sounds like form and function? It was and is.
Those who take design seriously today are perhaps not so interested in the secular/sacred pairing Shaker items represent, but there is yet another appreciating audience out there for Shaker ways. The new America celebrates its agrarian beginnings, natural ingredients, goods made by hand in old ways (think artisan breads, cheeses), the ideal of living simply, caring for and about others, putting their best into everything they do. There is an affinity, among idealists at least. Believers made items striving for perfection, in the thrall of leadership that pressed the ideal forms as suitable for God and the angels. In that context, the unique beauty of Shaker style makes perfect sense.
