An important book on Shaker art and life, offering a fresh look at a style that has endured through centuries and continues to inspire designers and homeowners. This book presents the elegantly austere and simply styled objects of the Shakers in the context of their faith and community at Mount Lebanon, N.Y., the spiritual and administrative center of the Shaker world. Outstanding examples of furniture, textiles, tools, and other objects-drawn primarily from the collection of Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon-bring the fascinating world of the Shakers to life. The book also explores the equally compelling material culture of Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester, Maine, the last active Shaker community, and how this group of Shakers continued to thrive while other Shaker communities elsewhere gradually disappeared. Accompanying a major exhibition organized by the Farnsworth Art Museum, this book presents a new and authentic perspective on the Shaker community. Specially commissioned photography, archival imagery, essays by prominent scholars, and a firsthand interview with a member of the Sabbathday Lake Shaker community deepen our understanding of this influential movement and style.

"Most writers have treated these three groups and the social ferment out of which they grew as simply an American sideshow. . . . In this book, therefore, I have attempted to go beyond the conventional focus on what these groups did; I have also sought to explain why they did what they did and how successful they were in terms of their own objectives. By trying sympathetically to understand these extraordinary experiments in social and religious revitalization, I believe it is possible to come to terms with a broader set of questions that affect all men and women during times of crisis and transition."--From the preface Winner of the Best Book Award, Mormon History Association

Highly pictorial presentation of "the history and vision of the United Society of Believers in Christ's second appearing from 1774 to the present."

Canterbury Shaker Village, located in Canterbury, New Hampshire, just northeast of Concord, has seen more archeological research than any other Shaker community. David R. Starbuck has been digging there for over a quarter of a century. Beginning in 1978, Starbuck and his team mapped some 600 acres of the village, preparing sixty-one base maps, as well as dozens of drawings of foundations and mill features. Accompanying the maps were several hundred archeological site reports describing the history and present condition of every field, dump, foundation, wall, path, and orchard within the community. These documents offered the first comprehensive look at both the built and natural environment of any Shaker village. This above-ground study—with much updating—forms the second part of this volume. Through the 1980s, grant funding was available chiefly for above-ground recording and only rarely for excavating. Still, from the beginning Starbuck and his team speculated about what types of unexpected artifacts might be found if excavations were conducted in the Shaker dumps or in the nicely-manicured lawns behind the village’s communal dwellings. With the 1992 death of Sister Ethel Hudson, the community’s last surviving member, it seemed clear that Canterbury Shaker Village represented an unparalleled opportunity to use archeology as a cross-check on surviving nineteenth-century historical records and visitors’ accounts. The Canterbury Shakers constitute one of the very best test cases for historical archeology precisely because they were a society that tightly controlled their internal descriptions of themselves. Because we know what the Shakers expected of themselves, we can use excavations to determine whether they actually lived up to their own ideals. Excavations into various dumps began in 1994. In the Second Family blacksmith shop foundation, for example, Starbuck discovered thousands of pipe wasters—evidence that the Canterbury Shakers manufactured red earthenware tobacco pipes for sale to the World’s People. The Shakers’ hog house contained numerous ceramics and glass bottles; at another dump almost a hundred stoneware bottles for beer or ginger beer were unearthed along with whisky flasks, perfume bottles, and false teeth. These new artifacts contradict the popular image of the Shakers as plain, simple, and otherworldly, thereby challenging existing paradigms about the nature of Shaker society. Starbuck’s findings suggest that Shaker consumption practices were highly complex and that Shakers were perhaps more "human" than previously imagined. Neither Plain nor Simple, which brings together the original site maps with his most recent findings, will serve as the definitive archeological investigation of the Canterbury Shakers and their lifeways, and function as a model for similar archeological studies of communal societies.

Originally published in 1976 as Anne the Word, this is a popular biography of colorful and controversial Shaker founder Ann Lee.

In the tradition of "Plain and Simple" and "The Cloister Walk", this book offers a rare, intimate account of one woman's journey into the world of the Shakers--a radical Christian sect whose belief in a Mother-Father God, equal rights for all, and direct interaction with the spirits of the dead shocked other established religious communities Print ads. NPR sponsorships .

Insightful analysis, previously unavailable material, 116 illustrations. Emphasizes traditional Shaker crafts and industries.