Catherine S Goldring

Shaker Fancy Goods

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Thanks to their work ethic, business savvy, and creativity, the tireless Shaker Sisters turned a seemingly modest trade into the economic engine that sustained their communal way of life.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Down East Books
• Seitenzahl: 192
• Erscheinungstermin: 15. November 2022
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 282mm x 221mm x 15mm
• Gewicht: 875g
• ISBN-13: 9781684750238
• ISBN-10: 1684750237
• Artikelnr.: 62308679

Autorenporträt

Catherine Goldring first became interested in Shaker fancy goods when she owned an antique store in Littleton, Massachusetts. She lives in Natick, Massachusetts, and now works in real estate and teaches cultural studies at MassBay College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents
1. Pen Wipes
A practical invention, meant to keep a nib pen clean and functional, took
many shapes (chickens, pigs, pond lilies, pansies, maple leaves, dolls) and
sold briskly until the invention of the fountain pen.
2. Emeries, Pincushions, and Needle Books
During the heyday of needle making, as British factories were churning out
more than 50 million needles a week, Shaker Sisters invented a profitable
line of fancy accessories for sewing at home.
3. Cora Helena Sarle-Botanical Artist and Fancy Goods Painter
Sarle began composing botanical drawings as a 19 year old, a testament to
the encouragement among the Shakers to follow your own talent and spirit.
That turned into a lifetime painting scenes-on plates, buttons, tin boxes,
and pincushions-for use in the Community and for sale.
4. Raccoon Fur and Silk Gloves
As revenues from the Shaker seed business waned, income from the coonskin
fur and glove trade flourished, with Brothers and Sisters working side by
side in a far-reaching enterprise that betrayed a surprising instinct for
contemporary fashion among the Shakers.
5. Shaker Dolls
The Sisters created a thriving business in Shaker dolls for practical
reasons: they wanted to make use of the fabric scraps left over from the
Shaker cloak trade. Thanks to this thrifty impulse, generations of mothers
and daughters cherished their own demure porcelain dolls, dressed in
meticulous facsimiles of modest Shaker dress, complete with bonnets,
cloaks, and lace collars and undergarments.
6. The Shaker Cloak
The Sisters made gray cloaks for decades for their own use, but in the late
1800s began to make versions in a stunning range of colors, with
painstaking details, for fashionable women of the world, who called them
opera cloaks. Separate villages ran their own concerns, each headed by an
Eldress, or pair of Eldresses, who each ran her own brisk business year
round.
7. Shaker Fans
From the 1820s through the early twentieth century, the Sisters made fans
in a variety of fashionable styles and colors, using palm leaves, paper,
poplar, feathers, and ribbons, with handles of maple, black ash, cherry
wood, and other ingenious materials. These seasonal items were highly
salable, made of local materials, and could be made quickly, year round,
and so provided the Sisters with an outlet when other seasonal items were
unavailable.
8. Poplarware Boxes
The Shakers began making small boxes, first with cardboard and wallpaper
samples, sometimes with fragrant orange peels, and this practice developed
into ingeniously woven poplar boxes. Each village developed its own
signature styles, and the perennial best sellers were crafted in a dizzying
array of shapes and forms. Despite the signature styles, the production of
boxes was a cooperative venture, with raw material and equipment shared
from one village to the next as need arose.
9. Shaker Fancy Baskets
Shaker baskets began as a utility, made by men, for practical chores. As
the Villages lost men to industrial employment, the Sisters began making
fancy woven basket versions of the utility baskets in a great range of
styles-string baskets, button baskets, cat-head baskets, knife baskets-and
individual weaving styles, like quadrifoil, hexagonal, sawtooth.
10. Fancy Brushes and Dusters
The Sisters made fancy brushes and dusters out of horsehair and velvet,
with elegant handles lathed out of a variety of woods, such as maple,
cherry, and walnut. In an era when men wore expensive beaver top hats that
needed constant brushing, the trade proved to be a valuable one, and the
goods were easy to make.
11. Shaker Sweaters
Like the Shaker cloak, the trade in Shaker sweaters had its origin in the
practical wear that the Sisters knitted for themselves. With the advent of
knitting by machine, the Sisters capitalized on the chance to produce
high-quality sweaters of the best wool, at high volume.
12. Later Twentieth Century Shaker Fancy Goods
In an afterword by Michael Graham, the director of the Sabbathday Lake
Shaker Museum gives a brief catalogue of contemporary Shaker crafts over
the past fifty years.