A Shaker Dresser

he Shakers were a Protestant sect of English Quakers that immigrated to the U.S. in 1774. They founded largely self-sufficient communities from Maine to Kentucky and lived by the three guiding principles of honesty, utility, and simplicity. To support their communities, the Shakers would sell the food they grew, but also made furniture for sale to the world outside of their communities. For the Shaker furniture makers, their mission was to instill utility and longevity to the pieces they sold, all while sticking to their devout religious beliefs without adorning the pieces with any veneers, which they considered dishonest, flashy brass hardware, which they considered prideful, and simple lines without much adornment. They utilized stout joinery, and wooden pulls, giving Shaker furniture a distinct style. When the last shaker villages were dwindling in the 1930s, Faith and Edward Deming Andrews recognized the Shaker movement disappearing from history and sought to document it before it disappeared. It is no coincidence that around this time the famous Arts and Crafts movement centered around craftsmanship and form over production, post-industrial revolution, followed by the Modernist movement of the 1930s, and the “mid-century modern” style found so ubiquitous today.