64 ■ POPULAR WOODWORKINGEnd Grain
David Rowley, Freegift Wells,
Amos Stewart, Orren Haskens, Eli
Kidder...ever hear of these guys?
They were Shaker cabinetmakers,
the names behind one of the most
unifi ed and infl uential movements
in American furnituremaking. You
might think that they would have
been completely anonymous, like
most woodworkers of that era, but
a remarkable project by Shaker
scholar Jerry Grant, undertaken
in the 1970s and 80s, has brought
to life these and other artisans–27
utterly fascinating people–in Shaker
Furniture Makers (1989).
Grant drew heavily on journals
kept by the Shakers, discovering
detailed descriptions of their joinery
and fi nishing techniques. You won’t
fi nd much of that technical informa-
tion in this book, but you will fi nd
a well-written set of stories about a
set of celibate artisans who labored
under diff erent aesthetic and phil-
osophical constraints from those of
today. Grant writes:
Even though the Shaker crafts-
men worked for the good of the
community more than for personal
advancement, they were in many
cases strong individuals. Many
were saintly in their devotion; some
had strong fl eshly appetites for
things of this world... Some of their
intense personal eff orts [to remain
true to Shaker ideals]...were in vain.
Some of the master craftsmen left
the Society, while others remained
Shakers for life.
Shaker style evolved over the
years, but at its high point in the fi rst
half of the nineteenth century, it was
a pure form of a rectilinear Federal
style popular in the world outside
the utopian Shaker villages. Remove
the inlay, simplify the molding, useonly local woods–and you have the
basis for many Shaker pieces. Of
course, all this was done in the name
of a higher cause. Grant relates one
telling example: “In the summer of
1840, David Rowley removed the
superfl uous brass pulls on drawers
and replaced them with wooden
ones, which were deemed, through
spiritual communication, to be more
appropriate to Shaker life.” Imagine
building to please those clients!
Many Shaker pieces were un-
signed, so how do you tell who made
what? Well, how they were made.
One way is to look at how. Grant
writes about an unusual method
of dovetailing drawers that can be
traced to the work of Abner Allen
and Grove Wright, of the Hancock
Bishopric. On more than thirty piec-
es, these artisans tapered the sides
of their drawers, making the sides
narrow at the top and wide at the
bottom. This meant that the wear
surface on the drawer’s bottom was
wider than normal–and thus would
presumably last longer–while the
top of the side would have a more
delicate look. Cutting dovetails for
tapered sides is defi nitely more
diffi cult than straight sides.
A few years ago, I found a chest at
a fl ea market whose drawers were
made this way (right). The drawer
sides are pine, and although their
bottom edges are^3 / 4 " wide, they’re
quite worn down. The chest was
covered in black paint, and cost very
little. Underneath the paint were
beautiful birch boards, fl aunting
large, tight knots and sensuous
crotch grain. The lines of the chest
were very plain–but not like any
Shaker piece I’d seen. Clearly, the
maker had fallen in love with some
unusual wood.Who made this piece? Did Allen
or Wright train this fellow? Could it
have been a young man who left the
sect because his “fl eshly appetites”
were too strong? Reading Shaker
Furniture Makers makes me wish
that we all left more behind than
just our work, because someday,
somewhere, someone might ask,
“Who was that guy?” PWTom Caspar is the former editor
of American Woodworker and Wood-
work magazines.A Shaker’s Life
By Tom Caspar
Research gives names to unknown artisans.