Where did the Shaker style come from?
The Shakers were a religious sect that began in England as an offshoot of the Quaker movement in the late 18th century. Transplanted to America because of persecution in their native country, the Shakers developed a spiritually-oriented communal lifestyle that emphasized plainness, simplicity, honesty and integrity. Material goods were to be functional rather than subject to fashion or whim. This simplicity, coupled with the Shaker cabinetmaker’s high standards of workmanship, led to the development of a genre of furniture with clean, spare lines of fine-grained cherry, maple and walnut, with only the exquisitely wrought joinery for decoration. These strong lines and unadorned surfaces make the Shaker style at home in either traditional or contemporary interiors..
