Many contemporary American furniture makers still turn to Shaker models for inspiration; and while few modern American makers reproduce specific Shaker originals, many — particularly those in the Northeast where Shakerism was most solidly entrenched — acknowledge their debt to the usually anonymous craftsmen who fashioned the furniture and woodenware on display at Sabbathday Lake and other Shaker communities elsewhere in the United States.
A post-and panel woodbox in the museum collection at Sabbathday Lake. Sabbathday Lake in southeastern Maine is now home to four practicing Shakers. Unlike the restored Shaker village at Pleasant Hill, Ky.
One employee, Leonard Brooks, lives on the site in a tidy white frame home across Route 26 from the Sabbathday Lake library of Shaker research materials. Brooks is the museum director for the Sabbathday Lake Shaker community and is in charge of the many exhibits of Shaker artifacts available there for public viewing.
That staff includes a librarian and two guides who offer minute tours of the museum at Sabbathday Lake. This museum includes not only artifacts from Sabbathday Lake but also material from other Shaker communities, in particular those in Maine.
Early in the 20th century as the other Maine Shaker communities were closing their doors, the material possessions of those communities were shipped to Sabbathday Lake.
As a result, any student of Shaker furniture— in particular any student of furniture produced in Maine communities — will find the collection at Sabbathday Lake of great interest. The community is one of the earliest Shaker settlements anywhere, dating to Within a scant year, the population had ballooned to almost Then on April 19, , the adult members of Sabbathday Lake took the covenant formalizing their acceptance of the doctrine of the founder of the Shaker movement, Mother Ann Lee.
Although other Shaker communities could claim larger numbers of inhabitants, Sabbathday Lake is the only community in Maine — or anywhere else — that has survived to the present day, continually inhabited by practicing Shakers.
The pursuit of simplicity in furniture making, as well as everything else, was the product of a lifestyle that put the Shakers outside the American mainstream — a lifestyle embracing the absolute equality of the sexes, the total surrender of personal goods, and — for many the most perplexing feature of Shaker life — the commitment to celibacy.
Charles Durfee and Peter Turner are two of those furniture makers whose work strongly reflects the Shaker aesthetic. While neither Durfee nor Turner embraced the Shaker lifestyle, each lived an unconventional lifestyle in his early years. Turner worked for Greenpeace for eight years doing environmental work, and Durfee worked at the Apprentice Shop in Bath for two years in the s building wooden boats with hand tools while living communally with other program participants in a small collection of yurts portable wood dwellings outside town.
Leonard Brooks, the current museum director, observes that the collection now includes furniture dating to the s, including much that is available for study. This stand up desk in old growth pine is inspired by pieces in Hancock and Mount Lebanon, although the Shakers would not have used the tombstone -arched panels.
Durfee has visited Sabbathday Lake many times. He has been an interested observer over the last 30 years as the remaining Sabbathday Lake Shakers struggled to retain their identity in the presence of declining membership. They had been lifelong Shakers. They had grown up as Shakers. A reproduction of a Queen Anne tavern table: the Shakers would retain the curves, in abbreviated form.
Lebanon, N. Like Shaker furniture makers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Durfee has worn many different hats during his working life. He started out as a history major at Oberlin College in Ohio.
After graduating in , he was drafted and served in Vietnam as a clerk. Following his military service, he tried graduate school for a year, thinking he might pursue a career in academics, but he soon realized he craved a more active profession. A trestle table in cherry demonstrates how old forms taken to their simplest can become very modern.
He then heard about a program in Bath, Maine, run by Lance Lee called the Apprentice Shop, which taught wooden boat building in a working boat shop. I eventually joined in I came to Bath and spent two years in the program. There were 8 or 10 or so of us. The guys were all bearded. This is the distance from the edge of the hole to the edge of the door in millimeters. The smaller the number, the closer the hole is to the edge.
Usually your hinge instructions will specify what this needs to be set on, but as a general rule of thumb, I usually leave mine on 5mm. Also, I just recently learned that this drilling guide detaches from the plate. Adjustable shelves in cabinets and furniture is a really nice touch and feels kind of like an upgrade. Shelf pins come in many shapes and sizes, but I like this style best.
Basically, you just place the pin in a hole drilled into the cabinet sides and set your shelf on top of the pins. If you want to raise the shelf, move the pins up a hole or two. BUT, first, you have to drill the holes. The Kreg Shelf Pin Jig allows you to drill equally spaced holes for this without any set up or measuring. You literally just hold or clamp the jig, and drill into the slots. I like to set mine flat on the cabinet bottom, drill into the top hole, then I use the included pin inserted into the bottom hole of the jig and into the hole I just drilled in the cabinet to hold my place while I work my way up the cabinet.
Run these holes up both sides of the back and both sides of the front. These are the diameters of the pin holes.
So be sure to order the correct pin size to fit your jig. You can use my drawer building guide post to help you determine where your slide should go. Then, clamp these guides onto the cabinet at that location and install the slide. I may not use these often to install my slides, but I do really love them for helping me install my drawers.
Once the slides are in place, I can turn these around and clamp the opposite direction to hold my drawers still while I install them onto the slides. And finally, if you are installing new hardware on cabinets, furniture, etc, this is a handy jig to use to keep things consistent.
To set it up, simply measure the distance of the screw holes on your pulls measure center to center and adjust the drilling holes on the front of the jig to match.
Note that one side is metric and one side is standard. Then, you just have to measure to find the center of the drawer horizontally, clamp in place, and drill the holes for the pull. It works the same for the doors, too. Shelf support tips. There are dozens of shelf support styles available. We break them down for you. Two smart ways to hang your Shaker cabinets — and these methods apply to all cabinets! Combining hand and power tools in your projects. The Shaker bench project in this download gives you some great tips on getting the most from your tool kit.
Here's What You'll Learn:.
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