The Winter Antiques Show announces today that The Shaker Museum and Library in Old Chatham, New York, which is home to the most important and largest collection of Shaker materials in the world, will display nearly 100 Shaker artifacts during the renowned 54th annual Winter Antiques Show, January 18-27, 2008 at the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City. The loan exhibition, An Eye Toward Perfection, which will include quintessential Shaker chairs, chests and pails, as well as a rare hand-knit wool rug, was designed by Stephen Saitas and is sponsored by The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies for the twelfth consecutive year. This is the first major exhibition of a Shaker collection in New York City in more than a decade.

An Eye Toward Perfection: The Shaker Museum and Library includes some of the best existing examples of objects that demonstrate the Shaker principles of faith, community, industry and design. Shaker designs are widely admired for their simplicity, innovative joinery, quality, and functionality – embodying the “form follows function” principle long before it was associated with modern architecture and industrial design of the 20th Century. Whether sacred or temporal, everything created by Shakers was done with the understanding that it reflected a commitment to earthly perfection. Shakers made furniture for their own use, as well as for sale to the general public.

Murray Bartlett Douglas, a Life Member of the Board of Directors for the Shaker Museum and Library, has been named Honorary Chair for the museum’s Special Committee for the Loan Exhibition. She has served the Museum for more than 30 years, including as President of the Board. Ms. Bartlett Douglas recently retired as Vice Chair of Brunschwig & Fils, her family’s business, and has served as a faculty member of the New York School of Interior Design. She was honored by House Beautiful in 2003 as a Giant of Design.

The Shaker Museum and Library’s collection was amassed by John S. Williams, Sr., who began collecting in the 1940s by traveling to America’s remaining Shaker communities in New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine and acquiring examples of their arts, industries, domestic life, spiritual artifacts and manuscripts. His goal was to preserve the breadth and depth of the Shaker story, which is one of the most compelling religious and social movements in America. Shakers were members of a Protestant monastic sect who lived together in communal villages. They carefully documented their domestic, economic and spiritual life in community journals, account books, and personal diaries that commented freely on their relationships with “the World.” John Williams turned his private collection into a public museum in 1950. The collection has been featured in major exhibitions across the country, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1986), Paine Webber Art Gallery (1999) and the Seattle Art Museum (2000).

Complementing the loan exhibition, the museum will present lecture series at the Winter Antiques Show; highlights include collecting Shaker boxes and a preview of the museum’s future home at the historic Mt. Lebanon site.

Highlights of the loan exhibition include (images are available):

· Red Two-Drawer Blanket Chest, Mount Lebanon, N.Y., 1866. Signed and dated on the underside of a drawer runner by maker Brother Richard Bushnell, this pine blanket box chest is typical of those made for use by Shakers for storage of domestic textiles in dwellings. Bushnell, a North Family Elder, noted that this was the first piece of furniture he ever made.

· Yellow Case of Drawers, Mount Lebanon, N.Y., 1830. This pine case of drawers is typical in the Shakers’ design of communal furniture and extraordinary in finish. Standing over six feet high and with ten drawers, this piece accommodates the storage needs for several Shakers.

· Red & Black Sewing Chair with Drawers, Mount Lebanon, N.Y., 1880. This otherwise common maple chair form, used in Shaker community, was made unique with the addition of two pine drawers mounted under the cloth tape seat and the decorative application of black and red paints in the style of Asian lacquered work.

· Yellow Blanket Chest with Drawer, Mount Lebanon, N.Y., 1830. This pine chest with maple drawer knobs is typical of chests used by Shakers for storage of domestic textiles.

· Red Double Case of Drawers, Mount Lebanon, N.Y., 1825. This sixteen-drawer, pine chest with cherry knobs stands almost seven feet high, requiring the use of a step-stool to reach the highest drawers.

· Yellow Side Chair with Tilters, Mount Lebanon, N.Y., 1840. This typical maple ladder back chair has become an icon of Shaker manufacture. This chair exhibits the Shakers’ tilter buttons on bottom of the back posts, designed to keep the post bottoms flat on the floor when the chair’s user leans it back.

· Side Chair, Mount Lebanon, N.Y., 1850. The lightness of this chair and use of figured maple adds to its delightful appearance. The chair has pewter ball-and-socket tilters on the back posts of the style patented by the Shakers in 1852.

· Blue Pail with White Lid, Canterbury, N.H., 1850. The carefully fitted lid and use of white paint on the interior suggest that this pail with pine staves, lid and bottom may have been used in the dairy.

· Yellow Pail labeled “Rice,” Canterbury, N.H., 1850. This pail retains its original color and is one of a group of buckets labeled for storage of grains kept in Shaker pantries.

· Meetinghouse Bench, Canterbury, N.H., 1850. This bench — pine seat, cherry crest rail and spindles and birch legs — is more than 13 feet long. It was used to seat worshippers during Shaker meetings. It was light enough to be moved out of the way to make room for dancing common during the Shakers’ 19th century worship.

· Rocking Chair, adapted to become a Wheelchair, Watervliet, N.Y., 1800-1820. This early rocking chair of maple, oak, cherry, beech and ash splint was adapted as a wheel chair with the addition of three wheels. One might consider this had been a favorite chair that was converted to accommodate changing special needs.

· Knitted Rug, Hancock, Mass., ca. 1895. One of a half-dozen known rugs skillfully knitted by Elvira Hulett, this wool, cotton and linen rug seems to exemplify the opposite of Shaker “simplicity” in its intricate patterned design. Sister Elvira’s work demonstrates the application of Shaker design skills in an attempt to reflect the Victorian styles of the day.

· Blue Vest, Mount Lebanon, N.Y., c. 1850. This dark blue wool vest worn by Shaker Brothers during Sunday worship during the mid-19th century was part of an ensemble of blue and white meeting clothes that Shakers designed for a sense of spiritual purity.

· Blue Tailor’s Counter, Canterbury, N.H., ca 1815. Once built directly into the walls of a tailoring workshop used by the Ministry at Canterbury, NH, this pine counter retains its original painted surfaces and is a classic example of asymmetrical Shaker design in case pieces.

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About the Winter Antiques Show
The Winter Antiques Show celebrates its 54th year as America’s most prestigious antiques show, featuring 75 renowned experts in American, English, European and Asian fine and decorative arts in a fully vetted Show. The Show was established in 1955 by East Side House Settlement, a social services institution located in the South Bronx. All net proceeds from the Show benefit East Side House Settlement. The Winter Antiques Show will run from January 18-27 at the Seventh Regiment Armory, 67th Street and Park Avenue, New York City. Show hours are from 12 Noon to 8 p.m. daily, except Sundays and Thursday, 12 Noon to 6 p.m. To purchase tickets for the Opening Night Party on Thursday, January 17th or the Young Collectors’ Night on Thursday, January 24th, please call (718) 292-7392 or visit the Show’s website at www.winterantiquesshow.com. General admission to the Show is $20, which includes the Show’s award-winning catalogue.

About East Side House Settlement
East Side House Settlement was founded in 1891 to help immigrants and lower income families on the East Side of Manhattan. In 1962, it moved to the South Bronx where it serves 8,000 residents annually within one of America’s poorest congressional districts, the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx. Focusing on educational attainment as the gateway out of poverty, East Side House’s initiatives include the innovative and highly acclaimed Mott Haven Village Preparatory School, a national model profiled in Business Week. For more information, please visit www.eastsidehouse.org.

About The Shaker Museum and Library
The Shaker Museum and Library in Old Chatham, New York, founded in 1950 by John S. Williams, Sr., was originally developed as a privately owned museum dedicated to preserving “life, work, art and religion” of the Shakers, the largest communal sect in America during its peak in the mid to late 19th Century. Shaker leaders personally aided this effort, and the Museum’s collection includes materials from nearly every Shaker community and from all Shaker time periods, most notably from the principal Shaker community at nearby Mount Lebanon, N.Y. The collection includes more than 75,000 objects and artifacts, including original furniture, textiles, tools and manufactured goods produced by the Shakers, as well as Shaker manuscripts and printed works, photographs and artwork. The American Association of Museums has accredited the Museum and Library since 1972. In 2002, the Shaker Museum and Library launched the Mount Lebanon Project to restore the North Family Site of Mount Lebanon Shaker Village as the insitution’s new home. For more information, visit www.shakermuseumandlibrary.org.

Posted: 10|16|07 at 9:47 am. Filed under: News.