Shaker Art

The odor of fresh-baked bread lured Dr. Edward Deming Andrews into a Shaker colony at Hancock, Mass. There & then (1920) he began collecting Shaker art. Last week, in two big rooms in the Berkshire Museum at Pittsfield, Mass, his collection, the most complete in the U. S., was put on view.

"All beauty that has not a foundation in use, soon grows distasteful, and needs continual replacement with something else." This maxim would sound serviceable to most modern designers of functional furniture. It was devised by devout, unlettered members of the communistic religious sect who called themselves Shakers. Kindled by the ardor of Ann Lee, a mystic Englishwoman who led a band of six men and two women to the U. S. in 1774, the Shakers took as their motto "Hands to work and hearts to God." They labored, shook away their sins, grew and flourished mainly in colonies in eastern New York and New England until the end of the 19th Century.

Dr. Andrews' collection showed beautifully wrought cupboards, chests, beds, trestle tables, chairs with ball-&-socket joints that could be tilted backward, coopersware, woven articles, primitive drawings of saints and heavenly visions, a complete herb shop. Since the Shakers despised anything so "giddy" as decoration, were even leary of curves, the collection was functional to a t.

Ann Lee taught the Shakers to believe in a dual, male-female God and Christ-spirit, enjoined them to remain celibate. Sister and brother Shakers lived together as large "families," in communities headed by elders and elderesses of equal authority. Their large frame houses, in which the floors were divided to segregate men & women, still stand as marvels of pegged construction. They worshiped, with ritual marches, dances, gesticulations, in great meetinghouses. At a Shaker dance, brothers & sisters lined up facing each other, with palms upturned to receive God's blessings, singing songs like Shake Off the Flesh:

Come let us all unite,

To purge out this filthy flesh and carnal sense,

And labor for the power of God

We'll raise our glittering swords and fight

And war the flesh with all our might

All our carnalities we now will break,

And in the power of God we'll shake. . . .

Shakers were content to let the race die out pending the arrival of a new order, thought to keep their colonies going by taking in orphans and children of dissolute parents. It didn't work. Before the Civil War, the four big Shaker colonies had 6,000 members. Today there are about 75. Part of the colony at New Lebanon, N. Y., whose meeting house is supposed to be the only early building in the U. S. with a barrel roof, has been sold. The rest is for sale. But its dozen or so oldsters stay on. The sisters wear the bonnets, severe dresses and cloaks of their predecessors. Buxom Sister Lillian makes fine chairs. Frail, nearly toothless Elderess Sarah Collins, 85, putters among her souvenirs, cackles affably, with many a "yea" and "nay," makes and sells braided rugs. She is one of the orphans who stuck with the Shakers. When a visitor last week remarked on the variety of Shaker work, Elderess Sarah explained: "Yea, we made everything except babies."

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