William Morgan: Emlen book goes beyond the stereotype of the Shakers
The United Society of Believers in Christ's First and Second Appearing are among the most beloved – and thus most mythologized – religious groups in American history. The Shaking Quakers or Shakers, as we call them, are usually remembered for their vows of celibacy and their proto-Modern design.
Shaker Sisters at Canterbury, N.H., circa 1893. All pictures are from Imagining the Shakers.
This stereotype does not do them justice, because while adhering to their tenets of simplicity, apartness, and prayer, they also managed to be remarkably efficient farmers and businesspeople. Even while having to depend upon recruits instead of future generations, the Shakers managed a widespread agricultural enterprise, along with furniture making, emanating from communities from Maine to Kentucky. There was much more that was worldly about these entrepreneurs than exquisite rocking chairs and efficient wood stoves.
Shaker Village, Enfield, Conn., in 1834
Robert P. Emlen's Shaker Village Views of 1987 remains a classic among a cottage industry of Shaker books. Now, the retired curator of Brown University collections and a former Rhode Island School of Design professor, Emlen has published one of the most intriguing books on the Shakers ever: Imagining the Shakers: How Visual Culture of Shaker Life was Pictured in the Popular Illustrated Press of Nineteenth-Century America (R.W. Couper Press, 2019, $45; R.W. Couper Press is part of Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y.)
Emlen, who once lived with the last surviving Shakers at their farming village in Sabbathday Lake, Maine, has gathered every known engraving or lithograph about the Shakers between 1830 and 1880. There are a few photographs, plus advertisements of the Shakers’ own and some Shaker-themed products.
Advertisement in the Maine Farmer, 1890
Fascinating and important to furthering our understanding of the Shakers, this is the sort of book that needed the support of a university press. In this case, the committed publisher is at Hamilton College, and they earn high marks for a very handsome production.
Shaker Pickles label, circa 1880-85
William Morgan, an architectural historian and a columnist, is the author of, among other books, American Country Churches, which includes a chapter on the Shaker settlement at Sabbathday Lake, Maine.