Shaker

Life, Work and Art

The Shakers were nineteenth-century America's largest and best known communal utopian society. By 1840, nearly six thousand celibate Brothers and Sisters lived and worked in eighteen communities from Maine to Kentucky. The Shakers were famous for their unusual way of life and for the dance worship that gave them their name. However they are chiefly remembered for the excellence and simplicity of their craft and design. Shaker design linked form and function with the "godly" virtues of plainness, simplicity and cleanliness. Today, only a handful are left, but the shaker legacy of equality and communalism lives in the creations they left behind and in 'Shaker: Life, Work and Art', the best-selling full-colour book on this remarkable society.