Shaker furniture from South Union, Kentucky

Magazine Antiques, May, 1997 by Tommy Hines

When the Shakers sent missionaries from their outposts in the northeastern United States to seek new locations further west, they founded seven communities in Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky between 1805 and 1822. The southernmost of these was South Union, Kentucky, founded in 1807 (see Pl. II). It was more than 150 miles from its closest Shaker neighbor, Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, and the four-day trip between the two villages was considered "both tedious and expensive."(1) The natives of New York who were assigned to lead the community at South Union thought they had come to the end of the earth.

South Union is located in a part of the state known as the Barrens, a landscape resembling the Great Plains with "little or no vegetation...[and where] scrubby bushes served for timber."(2) The Shakers bought a tract of timber near their settlement in 1811 and began to build log cabins to house a growing community. Initially, South Union looked no different from other rural settlements in southern Kentucky. However, by the early 1830s more than fifty brick structures towered over the flat landscape [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. Massive dwellings each housed nearly one hundred people, and a vast mill complex and large brick workshops rivaled any such establishments in the state. Well-groomed orchards and gardens and industries based on agriculture were models of economy and efficiency. It was what the elder Giles Avery (1815-1890) of New Lebanon, New York, called "an oasis in this desert of a country."(3)

Because South Union was considered the outer branch of the vineyard"(4) in the network of Shaker villages, and because the early converts were steeped in the traditions of their parents who had come to Kentucky from the back country, a distinctly southern Shaker community developed. The combination of this sense of tradition and the Shaker quest for godly perfection, simplicity, and order contributed to the creation of a unique material culture.

The extant furniture made at South Union is a cohesive collection that reveals recurrent molding profiles, turnings, and basic construction techniques. It seems likely that a single craftsman supervised its production during the busiest years, 1815 to 1860. This was probably South Union's principal carpenter Robert Johns (17951863), who was also the foreman during the construction of the Centre Family Dwelling (built 1822-1833). Jean Burks was the first to note the direct correlation between South Union's architecture and its furniture: "Details in the interior woodwork and trim of the...Centre Family Dwelling...are literally repeated in the moveable furnishings within."(5) This phenomenon is not found to the same degree in any of the other western Shaker villages.

While never a major source of income, the community's furniture sales to the world are documented from 1815(6) through the early 1820s. Thereafter the craftsmen concentrated on supplying the village, which was approaching its peak population by the mid-1820s and beginning an aggressive building program. Native walnut and cherry were the woods of choice, with poplar the secondary wood on most pieces, following regional practice. Poplar was also the principal wood for interior woodwork and for furniture that was to be painted.

The Shakers' Millennial Laws mandated in 1845 that "beadings, mouldings and cornices which are merely for fancy may not be made by Believers."(7) Beauty was supposed to be a by-product of simplicity, order, and function, not derived from useless decoration. It is apparent that simplicity was defined differently in Kentucky than in New Lebanon (renamed Mount Lebanon in 1861) where policy was made. South Union furniture has an abundance of subtle ornamental detail, such as beading and scribed lines that quietly finish the edges of cupboard doors or the pedestals of tripod stands. Moldings of eight different profiles have been documented, and they were commonly applied to architectural woodwork, built-in cupboards, and furniture (see Pls. VIII, VIIIa, VIIIb).

The most blatant use of ornament dates to the decade before the Civil War. Extant tables and beds have elaborately turned legs that terminate in simple, pear-shaped feet (see Pl. VI). The forms are related closely to their counterparts being produced locally outside the village and are definitely not typical of Shaker design elsewhere. Interestingly, tables with simple, cylindrically turned legs were also made at South Union at the same time. Why the same shop should have produced two such different styles simultaneously is not known.

South Union furniture so closely related to that produced in southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee that it is sometimes difficult to determine if a piece is of Shaker or worldly origin. This is particularly true of candlestands, chests of drawers, and chairs (see Pls. III, IV, VII). However, each of these forms exhibits shared characteristics that help distinguish them from non-Shaker examples. Candlestands attributed to South Union, for example, reveal uniformity in pedestal minings; two styles of feet predominate on the chests of drawers; and three distinctive finials have been documented on the chairs. Prototypes must have been made to define South Union forms, each still allowing for subtle variations.