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Shaker Museum

Explore over 18,000 objects

The world’s most comprehensive collection of Shaker objects.

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History of The Shakers

Shaker Museum elevates Shaker material culture to animate Shaker values and beliefs and inspire individuals and communities to deepen bonds and seek meaningful approaches to social, economic, environmental, and spiritual issues.

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Featured Blog Articles

A bench with a pink and gray patterned seat.
“…their sofas and their footrests are the best the world can give.”
Oct 13, 2021
Shaker Museum holds an extraordinary collection of materials relating to the Shaker chair business at the Mount Lebanon South and Second Families. Chairs made at Mount Lebanon from the late eighteenth century through the mid-1940s were the one category of furniture the Shakers...
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A piece of cloth with letters and numbers on it.
Cross stitched samplers
Sep 8, 2021
Girls, sometimes as young as five years old, were often taught skills needed to keep a family sufficiently dressed by, in part, making cross stitched samplers.  The word sampler comes from the French word, examplair – a model or pattern to copy or imitate – and originally sample...
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Sharon Koomler

Collections Manager

Sharon Duane Koomler is a Shaker scholar and traditional letterpress printer living in upstate New York. She has academic degrees in American Folklore from Indiana University and Western Kentucky University. Sharon has worked at Shaker Museums from Kentucky to New Hampshire as an educator, curator, consultant, and director. She has written and published on Shaker material culture and spirituality, and lectured widely on Shaker art, life, and belief. Sharon has a particular interest in the under-researched social aspects of Shaker life and ways in which Shakers practiced inclusion and intentionality.