Shaker Inventions

The Shakers’ communal style of living meant that they could never depend on “someone else” to get a given job done. They all had to work together to meet the community’s needs. Therefore, Shakers came up with many inventions to make everyday jobs a little easier. Shakers are most famous for inventing the clothespin and the flat broom. Other, less glorified, inventions include the metal pen, packaged garden seeds, a threshing machine, a pea sheller, an apple parer and corer, and a revolving oven. Shakers also made significant improvements upon the wood stove and the washing machine. In one Shaker village, a steam engine provided energy to wash, dry, and iron the laundry.

Shaker Influence on Art

The Shaker model of simplicity and worship has inspired many artists throughout the years. Several architects and furniture designers have drawn on Shaker designs for their art. Shakerism inspired other, less obvious, art forms as well. Composer Aaron Copland used the Shaker song “Simple Gifts” as the basis for his composition Appalachian Spring. This song also found its way into contemporary Christian worship through the song “Lord of the Dance.” Doris Humphrey, a pioneer of American modern dance and co-founder of Julliard School of the Arts, choreographed a dance based on the passion of Shaker worship. In more recent years, Tero Saarinen choreographed a dance entitled Borrowed Light based on Shaker ideas. As It Is In Heaven is only one of the major artistic pieces based on Shaker life.

Quilts, part 2

Here are more images of period quilts.

Quilts

Here are images of period quilts.

Solid-color quilts were common: one solid piece of fabric quilted to another with stuffing in between. The fabric could be white or colored, cotton or wool. This quilt and its detail are from http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/quilts/13.htm.




Another common style was the medallion quilt. This quilt consisted of a large center piece, which could be either a large piece of fabric (often with a printed design), an appliqued block (designs stitched onto a solid piece of fabric), or rarely, a pieced block (pieces of different fabric sewn together to make a pattern). The center piece was surrounded by multiple varying borders which continued the center piece's theme. More information on these quilts is available at http://www.womenfolk.com/quilting_history/medallion.htm, which is where these pictures are from.

Dust Pan

These images of dust pans are taken from ebay. None of them are quite right, but they give you a pretty good general idea.


This is an Amish dust pan from the early 1900s -- too late, but very much the right idea & it's so simple I can't imagine it changed much from 1830.

This is WAY too ornate -- and it's silver -- but the outline is the right idea.

Technically, this is a crumb tray, so it's significantly smaller than an actual dust pan, but if you just picture it at dust-pan size you'd have another good image of what we could go for.

Trunks

Here are pictures of trunks that are close to what we're going for. They're from http://oldtrunks.com/history/historypages/round_top_trunks.htm.

Shaking

Here is information about the shaking of Shakers, taken from Clara Endicott Sears' Gleanings from Old Shaker Journals. (Houghton Mifflin, 1916).

“They beat the air with their arms, and writhed with horrible contortions, until a faintness came over them which developed into a trance-like condition, and falling to the ground they lay there as if dead. When consciousness returned, they were seized with violent tremblings and twitchings . . . As the bodily agitation diminished, they began to prophesy.” (Shaking Quakers)
“Some had their eyes fixed steadily upwards, continually reaching out and drawing in their arms . . . Near the centre of the room stood two young women, one of them very handsome, who whirled round and round for the space of fifteen minutes, nearly as fast as the rim of a spinning wheel in quick motion . . . several of the young people, both men and women, began to shake and tremble in a most terrible manner. The first I perceived was their heads moving slowly from one shoulder to the other – the longer they moved, the quicker and more violently they shook. The motion proceeded from the hed to the hands, arms, and whole body, with such power as if limb would rend from limb.”

Samplers

Here are images of samplers from the time period, to give a sense of the stitching pattern. Samplers were generally used by girls and young women to practice their needlework, but the style of needlework would have continued into their adult life.
These images were found at: www.emlis.com/femaleworth.htm
www.needlewench.com/becky/sands/index.html
www.antiquesampler.net/gallery.html


1838

1824

1835

1838

1842

1832

Items from the Design Meeting

Here is a summary of the information I provided for the production meeting, Friday, 14 March.

Quilt blocks were appliquèd not pieced. (Rose of Sharon is a good example of an appliquè block.)
Knitting was done both by hand and machine. They often knit “footings” – the heel and toe portion of socks – for sale in the community. Crochet was seen as decorative, not functional, and therefore was not used.
For a picnic water carrier, there are many options. Glass, stoneware crocks, pottery, or tin would all be period-correct.
Each family dwelling house (holding 40-100 people) had its own laundry room. Certain women did the laundry for the entire house. Individual people’s clothing was marked with their name cross-stitched, usually into the collar. Linens were marked with the room title cross-stitched into a corner. They used agitators and washboards in a basin. They also ironed and did spot cleaning in the laundry room.
Irons were heated on a special stove with 10 slats for irons. A woman would take one iron out, use it until it was cold, replace it and pick up the next one. There was no way to keep an iron warm off the stove.
Dust pans were tin. They were straight across the top rather than fluted like modern ones.
Shaker women wore apron-front dresses with an extra panel in the front of the skirt to serve as an apron. They wore actual aprons only in the kitchen and the laundry room.
The 1994 edition of American Costuming Society’s Dress journal has a good article about Shaker clothing.
See post below for information about lap desks.

This is all from Susan Hughes, education director at Shaker Village, Pleasant Hill, Kentucky.

Lap Desk

The question: what would they use to write on?

The answer: a lap desk or writing slope. (The difference being, the lap desk is smaller.) Lap desks and writing slopes were very popular throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Many lap desks were quite fancy, but there were also simpler versions, and they could have been made by a woodworker in the community. A lap desk is essentially a hinged box, often with a sloping top. Paper, pens/pencils, etc. go inside the box. When you need to write something, you pull out the necessary equipment, sit down, put the box on your lap, and away you go.

The image on top is Thomas Jefferson's writing desk, made circa 1770. The other is a writing box (or lap desk) from around 1810.

For more images of lap desks, go to http://www.hygra.com/e/rwb.htm.

The basic history of Shakers in Kentucky

In 1799, there was a Presbyterian revival in western Kentucky. People involved in this revival received gifts of the Spirit and began to spread the doctrine of inner light. News about this revival reached the Shakers in New York. In 1805, they sent a delegation from the New Lebanon community to Kentucky to encourage the revival and establish a Shaker community. The second convert to Shakerism in Kentucky was a slave by the name of Anna Middleton -- which set Shakers apart from many religious at the time, who supported slavery. This and other "odd" behaviours led to antagonism toward the Shakers. They would eventually establish four Shaker communities in Kentucky: Union Village, North Union, South Union, and Pleasant Hill. In addition, a delegation from Union Village later established a community in Ohio.

This information is also from Phillippi's Shakerism, or the Romance of a Religion.

Shaker Overview

Here's a brief overview of Shakerism, from the information found in JM Phillippi's book Shakerism, or the Romance of a Religion (Dayton, Ohio: Otterbein Press, 1912).


The “Shakers,” or United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, believe that Ann Lee was the second bodily appearance of Christ (the first being Jesus). Ann Lee, a Quaker, was born in England in 1736. She moved to America following religious persecution, and died in New York in 1784. She received revelations from God. Among these were the fact that she was God’s second incarnation – this spoke to the duality (male/female) of God’s character. She also learned through revelation that the highest spiritual state could only be attained through the complete separation of the sexes and strict sexual abstinence.
Ann Lee’s theology led to the distinct character of the two sexes in Shakerism. Every Shaker community was guided by four elders – two male and two female. Two sects of Shakerism arose, with different perceptions of familial relations. The Adamic order permitted family groups to live together, and allowed married couples to engage in sexual activity for the sole purpose of creating offspring. The Spiritual order, meanwhile, strictly forbade marriage. Married couples who entered this order separated and became known as brother and sister. The Spiritual order made perfectly clear that everyone was to love everyone else the same, with no hint of favouritism.
The other distinct aspect of Shakerism was its use of communal property. Upon entering the Shakers, new members turned over all their property to the common treasury. Even if the new members decided to leave the community at a later point, their property remained in the common treasury. All property was to be used for the benefit of all.
Shakers generally worshipped in an oblong sanctuary, the men at one end and the women at the other. The preacher stood in the middle. Worship services lasted as long as necessary, with everyone permitted to speak if they felt led. Services often involved set dances, accompanied by singing. (This dancing often drew outside observers, sometimes from neighbouring universities, to the services to observe.) Shaker communities held a special outdoor service once a year, in the summer, to receive special blessings and gifts from the Spirit. They also held yearly confessions: men confessed all their sins to other men, and women to women.

Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community

Sabbathday Lake is the only Shaker community still existing in the United States. (They're in Maine.) Here is the link to the information page on their website, which has brief overviews of Shaker history, theology, and community life.
http://www.shaker.lib.me.us/about.html

Welcome!

This is the blog for GFU theatre's spring production of As It Is In Heaven. As dramaturg, I will be posting information on history, context, theology . . . basically whatever you need to know. So if you run into a question in your rehearsal process, and don't want to research the answer to your question, that's what I'm here for. You can ask me questions one of several ways. Number one, you can leave a comment on the blog. Number two, you can leave a message on ProjectPath. Number three, you can email me. Number four, find me and ask me. Number five . . . well, get creative.
Enjoy!
Megan
your friendly local dramaturg-in-residence