Photo: © Vitra Design Museum / Alex Lesage
Looking back on their origins, belief system, progressive ideals, and history of production reveals a remarkable chapter that many continue to learn from today. “The mythology around the Shakers is so rich,” says Mea Hoffman, a curator at Vitra Design Museum in Germany, which recently co-organized the exhibition Shakers: A World in the Making with the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. (Shaker Museum, designed by AD100 Hall of Fame firm Selldorf Architects and currently being built in Chatham, New York, loaned most of the show’s objects.) “That’s part of the intrigue, and why we keep looking back at this history.”