New and improved - Books About Antiques - The Encyclopedia of Shaker Furniture - Brief Article - Book Review

Magazine Antiques, March, 2004 by Alfred Mayor

The Encyclopedia of Shaker Furniture by Timothy D. Rieman, who makes reproductions of Shaker furniture, and Jean M. Burks, a curator and scholar of Shaker furniture, first appeared in 1993, published by Harry N. Abrams. The book has now been republished in an enlarged edition that includes illustrations of some three hundred more pieces of furniture and color illustrations of a great deal of the furniture shown in the first edition. Finally, there is a new chapter entitled "The Shaker Palette," embodying many of the findings of Susan Buck, who published the results of her research in three articles in 1995.

Whereas much Shaker furniture today has been stripped of paint, it was originally bright with color, mixed by the Shakers from scratch until the late nineteenth century. Buck has demonstrated this by the scientific analysis of pinhead-sized morsels of cross-sections of paint. An analysis of the paint in the Ministry Shop in the South Union, Kentucky, community produced an astonishingly bright restoration, which is pictured. The floor is chrome yellow, the steps of the stairway are lipstick red, and the banister and risers are a darkish tan. The analysis was made by Buck, Craig Deller, and Christian Goodwillie, whose master's thesis of 2001 was devoted to this room. It is a far cry from the Mount Lebanon community in New Lebanon, New York, seen through the eyes of Charles Dickens in 1842: "We walked into a grim room, where several grim hats were hanging on grim pegs" and so forth.

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The index to this handsome new edition is inexplicably skeletal.

The Encyclopedia of Shaker Furniture, by Timothy D. Rieman and Jean M. Burks (Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 610-593-1777), $125.00 (hardcovers).