Arrival Day is August 6. That’s the day 250 years ago when Mother Ann Lee (1736–1784) stepped foot in the United States, bringing the Shaker faith and way of life to this country. Of the nineteen Shaker communities subsequently established here, only the one at Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester, Maine, remains active. But that doesn’t mean that appreciation for, or fascination with, the Shakers is gone.
One clear indication of appreciation is the US Postal Service’s new “Shaker Design” Forever stamps. The twelve images, from photographs by award-winning photographer Michael Freeman, celebrate the simple beauty, utility, and impeccable workmanship of Shaker material culture in everything from furniture and oval boxes to textiles and architecture (the photo specifics can be found at stampsforever.com). The pane selvage displays a vintage photograph of Brother Ricardo Belden (1868–1958) in his workshop at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, taken by Samuel Kravitt about 1935.
The stamps were officially issued in June at Hancock, one of the several original Shaker villages that thrive as living museums today. To celebrate the anniversary and honor Mother Ann Lee and the ideals of gender equality, freedom of religion, and a simpler life that she championed—ideals we are perhaps still trying to attain today—HSV has dedicated its summer exhibits to works by contemporary women artists that resonate with Shaker history or principles. Take, for example, Alyssa Mumtaz’s Tree of Foreknowledge shown here, which speaks to the mid-1800s Shaker revival period called the Era of Manifestations and the so-called gift drawings it inspired—drawings that purportedly revealed divine communications from beyond the grave. (In September the Museum of American Folk Art will open Anything But Simple devoted to gift drawings.) Mumtaz says her work was “inspired by the ‘blazing tree’ received by Shaker visionary Hannah Cohoon” at Hancock. Reflecting on the universality of the “arboreal imagery so central to the Shakers’ eschatological imagination,” she notes that it “echoes the Muslim conception of the Gardens of Paradise as described in the Holy Qur’an” as well as the “imagery and material sensibility of South Asian miniature painting, which has a tradition of representing saints and their disciples seated beneath sacred trees.”
At Sabbathday Lake, Arrival Day is being celebrated with a four-day conference titled “God’s Work Will Stand: The Shakers’ Ongoing Testimony” from August 2 to 6. The program, with lectures, musical events, worship services, workshops, and other activities, is sold out, but it promises the latest in Shaker scholarship, as well as a firsthand look at the two major projects underway at Sabbathday Lake, both reminders of the key role farming plays in the lives of the Shakers, even today: the restoration of the massive barn created in 1891 from two smaller 1830s barns and the restoration of the two-hundred-year-old Herb House. When completed, the Herb House will not only be a year-round educational and cultural space, but also headquarters for the ongoing production and sale of dried herbs, a business the Shakers pioneered in the 1820s. All of this confirms continued appreciation for the Shakers 250 years later, but what about continued fascination with the sect? For that, wait for the film in preparation by award-winning filmmaker Cynthia Wade, who lived in the Berkshires for many years and spent time as a docent at Hancock Shaker Village. She and collaborator Nannina Gilder, a screenwriter and historian who lives in nearby Tyringham, Massachusetts, the site of another early Shaker village, are working on a powerful narrative about two young Shaker Sisters caught up in a conflict between Hancock and Tyringham regarding gift drawings. The film is expected to be released next year.
