Category Archives: Arrival of the Shakers in America

Aug 06 2021
Arrival of the Shakers in America, Book of Days Calendar, Summer

Chosen Land, or Your Convivio Book of Days for August

A few days late letting you know about your Convivio Book of Days calendar for August, but, nonetheless, here it is, a printable PDF as usual, and a fine companion to this blog. Our cover star for the month is an 1867 painting by Winslow Homer, called Haymakers. As I mentioned in a Convivio Dispatch from Lake Worth just the other night, Homer’s painting reminds me of being a printing intern at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community in Maine back in the late 90s, for there were many days when I was not in the Dairy Cellar printing but rather in the garden weeding, or out in the fields, helping to bring in the hay. We’d load the bales onto the hay wagon, ride the wagon to the big red barn, and there, I would get to do my favorite thing: look up at the ceiling and at all those beautiful wooden boards, nailed in place in 1830, nearly half a century before Winslow Homer painted his haymaking scene. Looking up from inside, that barn looked to me for all the world like a vast cathedral, one filled with the sacred smell of animals and newly cured hay, sunlight streaming in on slanted rays through small clear windows.

I’d go home later each haymaking day with a stuffy nose and the worst sinus headache. A little too much hay. But I’d do it again if I could.

And here we are, at the Sixth of August: one of the most important days of the year in the Shaker calendar. I’ve heard it called Landing Day, but Brother Arnold and Sister June and Brother Andrew there at the Community, they always call it the Glorious Sixth, this annual summer occasion that marks the day in 1774 when the founder of the Shaker movement, Mother Ann Lee, arrived in New York Harbor after setting sail from England. Mother Ann was following a vision from on high that told her to bring her small band of followers from Manchester to the New World, and so she took that leap of faith. The passage was not smooth, and there is a tale of a great storm that roared up and caused a plank to tear loose from the ship, and the ship began taking on water, but Mother Ann had another vision that night, one of an angel telling her to be not afraid, all would be well, and then another great wave crashed upon the ship and forced the loosened plank back into place. The ship stopped taking on water, the storm quelled, what water was taken on was pumped out, and Mother Ann and her followers arrived in safety and began their quiet work. Work that continues to this day at Sabbathday Lake in Maine, the place they call Chosen Land.

My friends there will be first and foremost in my mind today, and especially at sunset, when they will celebrate with song and prayer this special day. Blessings on them, and on us all.

SUMMER HIGH FIVE SALE
Here in our neck of the woods, my mom, Millie, has been embroidering each and every day and is anxious to get back to it when she’s not. She’s having a ball making Millie’s Tea Towels, and they’ve turned out to be a big hit! Each one is embroidered by hand by my Mom, and since we introduced them last month, she’s made a few new collections that you’ll find now at our website: in addition to the original Baking Day, Kitchen Wisdom, and Java Jive collections, there are new collections of flour sack tea towels for beachgoers, for campers, for wine lovers, and a new seven towel set––one for each day of the week––all about PIE (one of our favorite things).

All summer long, use discount code HIGH5 at checkout for $5 off your purchase of $35 on everything in the shop. Take it to $50 and earn free domestic shipping, too. Click here to shop! You’ll find Millie’s Tea Towels under our new Linens & Textiles category.

Mom gets the full amount of each sale of her embroidered tea towels; it makes me very happy to see her happy in this new venture and that’s what matters to me (plus it pretty much takes her a whole day to embroider each towel!). That’s my mom in the photo you’ll see when you start shopping, in a fishing boat, circa 1950. Seeing that picture is reason enough to click.

 

Image: “Haymakers” by Winslow Homer, which also happens to be the cover star for this month’s Convivio Book of Days calendar. Oil on canvas, 1867 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Aug 04 2020
8 Comments
Arrival of the Shakers in America

Simple Gifts: Chosen Land

TreeOfLife

Here’s an updated version of a blog post for this day, published originally on the 6th of August, 2015. It is updated for this Covid-19 era and with updates to the roster of Shakers living in this place known as Chosen Land. The rest of the message is just the same, filled with the same spirit. ~ John

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The Sixth of August is an important day for a small group of folks Seth and I know and love in Maine. They call each other brethren and sisters and they respond to questions in the old style yea and nay. They are the Shakers of Sabbathday Lake and there are three of them, currently: Brother Arnold, Sister June, and Brother Andrew.

August 6 marks the anniversary of the arrival of Shaker founder Mother Ann Lee in America. It is a day the Shakers call The Glorious Sixth. Mother Ann and a small band of followers left England and came to New York in 1774. Their official name was the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, but they were ridiculed for their whirling dances and outsiders began calling them Shaking Quakers, which was meant to be derogatory. They embraced the name and soon began referring to themselves as Shakers. The movement found fertile ground in America and Communities were founded in the 1700s and 1800s throughout New England and New York and west to Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, and there was even a short-lived southern Community in Florida, up near Kissimmee.

Don’t let the yeas and nays fool you: the Shakers are a progressive bunch. From the start, they stressed equality of the sexes and the races. African Americans (most of them former slaves) were fully equal in their Communities. Shakers then and now refer to God as Mother/Father and women have always held prominent leadership roles. Early Shakers were quick to jump on board with technology, too, and even invented early versions of many tools we use even to this day, like flat brooms, and washing machines. A prominent Shaker motto is “Hands to work, Hearts to God,” a tenet of their belief handed to them by Mother Ann. Technology was useful in helping them make the work they had to do more beautiful, more prayer like. To that end, the things that Shakers made in their Community industries over the years have become known for their exquisite craftsmanship. And there have been many things: furniture, of course, as well as oval boxes, poplar ware, even the culinary herbs and herbal teas they package today (which we offer at the Convivio Bookworks website and which the Sabbathday Lake Shakers have been selling since 1783).

And so today it will most likely be Brother Arnold who prepares a big meal for the Community. Usually friends will gather and join them, but this year, in this time of social distancing, it will be a small and quiet celebration. Perhaps they will eat out on the lawn or in the dining room of the Dwelling House. Come sundown, they will gather up and head across the street, to the 1794 Meetinghouse, a building so beautiful in its simplicity. There are no column supports to interrupt the openness, which gave the early Shakers plenty of room for their ecstatic dancing. The Shakers today do not dance, but still the building inspires. Whenever I am there, I look at the wide plank floor. I think of all the Shakers who whirled and danced on that floor. I look at the beams painted with blueberry milk paint, the original paint from 1794, still blue, still the hue of sky at dusk.

There will be readings and set Shaker songs. One song that is always sung on this night begins At Manchester in England, this blessed fire began / And like a flame in stubble, from house to house it ran…. There will be testimonies from anyone who is moved to speak, followed always by Shaker spirituals inspired by those testimonies. And through it all, despite the lanterns, night will slowly descend on the Meetinghouse and the Community gathered, wending its way, weaving its magic.

Seth and I were there with them only once for this occasion, in 1996, when I was a printing intern with Brother Arnold. And I remember always what happened as the room filled with darkness and lamplight. The women sat on one side of the room and the men on the other, as is the Shaker custom, and in the faces of the sisters and other women across from me, I could discern the faces of Shakers throughout time. We may have entered the Meetinghouse in 1996, but it didn’t seem to remain 1996. Sacred spirit filled that sacred space.

Seth and I will be thinking of our Shaker family tonight as the sun sets, as we do each Sixth of August and so many times through the year. We will think of them and remember this night and our privilege of sharing it with them. The Sabbathday Lake Shakers call their home Chosen Land. To be there is to understand why. Especially on the Sixth of August: it is one night where this title becomes particularly apparent.

Please join Seth and me on Wednesday, August 5 at 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time for a live broadcast of “Book Arts 101: Home Edition” on Facebook Live. Click here for a direct link. Video is available after the live broadcast if you can’t be there at 3. This episode is subtitled “Simple Gifts,” and we’ll be chatting about Shaker craft and our experiences working with the Shakers over the years––me as a printing intern, Seth as a gardener and tour guide. I will no doubt be relating the tale of that August 6 evening in 1996, and we’ll also have some lovely things to show you: Shaker oval boxes, the handmade books we made with Brother Arnold, and probably a few other odds and ends from our collection. There’s a new “Book Arts 101: Home Edition” each Wednesday, by the way. Each episode is an unscripted ramble through the book arts, craft and design… and whatever else drifts through my head at the time. You can watch all the previous episodes here (and future ones, too).

The image above is the most famous of the Shaker gift drawings received from the spirits in the Era of Manifestations: a mid-nineteenth century period of intense Shaker spiritual revival. The drawing is called “The Tree of Life” and it was seen and painted by Sister Hannah Cohoon at City of Peace (the Hancock Shaker Community in Massachusetts) on July 3, 1854.

 

Aug 06 2018
9 Comments
Arrival of the Shakers in America, Summer

Sister Mildred’s Lament

In the late 1990s, when I was in grad school learning how to print and how to make books and paper, I’d spend my summers at Chosen Land, the only remaining active Shaker Community in the world. Each summer I would pack my little Dodge Neon and drive up from one corner of the east coast to the other, up from Florida to Maine. I would research, write, print and bind books together with Seth Thompson and with Brother Arnold Hadd, who is one of the busiest people I know, and yet he always found time to warmly welcome me into his world and allow me to immerse myself in it. Aside from the researching and writing and printing and binding, there would also be barn chores and gardening and herb packing and haying and storekeeping and who knows what else. And there would be amazing meals and Sunday Meetings. My world was filled with Shaker music and Shaker lore and Shaker history, day in and day out, and then suddenly in August, just about now, it would be time to go back to school, back to Alabama, which, truth be told, was never anywhere near as good as being in Maine. To leave all these people, who had become like a second family to me, brought me an annual bout of summertime melancholy.

Before leaving each August, though, would come one of the high points of the year in the Shaker calendar: the day they call the Glorious Sixth. It is the day that marks the arrival of the Shakers in America on August 6, 1774. They were a small band from Manchester, England, led by a woman named Ann Lee. Her followers called her Mother Ann, and after suffering much persecution in England, she had a vision that she should move her small church to America, and this is the day they landed in New York Harbor. They called themselves then the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, but they became known as Shaking Quakers, a derogatory name given to them by outsiders to describe the whirling and sometimes frenetic dances that were part of their worship. In their own empowering move, they embraced the name and began referring to themselves as Shakers, and following their arrival in America, the Shaker movement gained momentum. Shaker communities sprouted up throughout New England and west into Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. A short lived community was founded even in Florida. They are a liberal and progressive bunch, embracing technology (and inventing a lot of things we use commonly today) and believing in social justice and equality of the sexes and the races even way back to their founding in the 1700s.

The Shakers from early on in their history were monastic communities, and this type of life gradually fell out of favor in the United States. There were thousands of Shakers at the height of the movement in the mid 1800s, but that number declined as the years went on, and one by one in the late 1800s and 1900s Shaker Communities closed and consolidated. And now there is but one left that is still a place of Shaker worship and that is Chosen Land, the Shaker Community at Sabbathday Lake, Maine, the place I was lucky enough to spend summers at. Most of what people know about the Shakers these days are the artifacts they left behind: things like oval boxes and exquisite furniture, handcrafted with beautiful, modern simplicity––pieces that have been known to fetch tens of thousands of dollars (or more) at auction.

Sister Mildred Barker was the eldress at Chosen Land long before I ever started coming around, and though we’ve never met, still I feel I know her in a way. I know her voice, thanks to recordings, and I’ve heard plenty of stories about her thanks to conversations I’ve had with Brother Arnold and with Sister Frances, when she was alive. Sister Mildred famously said a variation of the words in the woodcut that’s in the photo at the top of this essay. Her actual words were, “I almost expect to be remembered as a chair or a table.” The woodcut is one I made in Alabama one of those late summers after leaving Chosen Land, feeling, no doubt, a bit wistful and melancholy. I had the words wrong, but my heart was in the right place. My heart was at Chosen Land. And my heart will be there tonight, too, this Sixth of August––this Glorious Sixth, where Brother Arnold and Sister June will gather with friends at sunset to honor those who came before them, including Mother Ann and Sister Mildred, who will be remembered not at all as a chair, but as the kind and good soul she was.

 

The print is titled “Sister Mildred’s Lament” and it was carved and printed in August or September, 1996. It’s a print I had long forgotten, but in gathering up some Convivio Bookworks broadsides that are headed off for an exhibition in Japan, it resurfaced––oddly enough, on the eve of the Glorious Sixth. I told the story to the curator and sent her a quick photo, and now Sister Mildred, too, is headed off for Japan in the form of this print. I’m chalking that up to the quality of the story, rather than the quality of the print.

Your purchase of the culinary herbs and herbal teas we sell here at Convivio Bookworks, by the way, all support Chosen Land. The Shakers have been packing and selling herbs since 1799, and helping to support them through their herb industry is one of my favorite things about our catalog. That and how wonderful the place smells every time we receive a shipment of herbs from them; the aroma that comes out of every box we receive from the Shakers takes me right back to the Herb Department inside the old Sisters’ Shop at Chosen Land.

 

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