Detail image of yellow painted chest of drawers, ca. 1840.
Shaker-style furniture has long been celebrated by design lovers for its lean, sparing lines and uncompromising simplicity. Perhaps less known to these same design buffs are the ideals of inclusion and fairness to which the Shakers—members of a religious sect who traveled from England to the American Northeast in the mid-18th century—subscribed.
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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.