Popular Woodworking 2006-02 № 153, страница 73

height and width of drawers and doors. We see pattern as drawers ascend a chest front, as doors move across a cupboard.

In some cases, these basic forms are arranged according to furniture-making tradition, when, for example, a set of drawers is graduated from a large bottom drawer to a small top drawer. The cupboard-over-chest on the previous page exhibits this type of graduation. The bottom drawer front is wide, the next one up measures 8V8", the next one up measures 7", and the top drawer measures only 5⁷/8". This orderly progression is one our experience with drawers encourages us to accept.

At other times, however, Shaker craftsmen manipulated these basic forms for reasons of

"All work done, or things made in the church for their own use, ought to be faithfully and well done, but plain and without superfluity."

— Shaker Father Joseph Meachum, 1790

function of which we now may be unaware. The drawers of the second cupboard-over-chest were graduated in a way that is less familiar, a way that was perhaps intended to suit a particular use. Instead of the largest drawer being at the bottom - as can be seen in the chest of drawers below - the drawers of this cupboard-over-chest are graduated in reverse, with the largest drawer being at the top. The bottom drawer front measures 8" wide, the next one up measures 9¹/2" and the top drawer measures 10".

Why the Eccentric Design?

It seems unlikely that the maker learned his craft this way. There is

This Pleasant Hill chest of drawers is a study in Shaker simplicity - with the exception of two details: the decorative turnings on the feet, and the scratch-stock simulated cock bead surrounding each drawer front, which retains a crisp appearance even in the close-up.

a centuries-old tradition of graduating drawers with the smaller drawers to the top. More likely, the maker was meeting a particular need in the Shaker community, one that required a large drawer at waist height.

He was, in effect, grafting onto the Shaker appreciation of the basic form the architecture aphorism: "Form follows function."

My first experience with this kind of design eccentricity made me a little uncomfortable. Thirty years ago, when I discovered Shaker furniture, I had little experience with work that didn't follow the familiar patterns of classical American period furniture. Shaker focus on simplicity and function opened my eyes, demonstrating to me that there are other "right" ways to design a piece of furniture, and these ways were not confined to matters of drawer graduation.

In the world outside the Shaker community, table, chest and cupboard tops were usually made with shaped edges. At the very least, these edges were given a slight radius, but many Pleasant Hill tops are simply cut square. The top of the chest of drawers at left is one example. The intermediate top in the cupboard on the previous page, the top of the drawer unit, is another.

Here, too, we are forced to see not the embellishment of the basic form (a moulded edge), but the form itself - the simple, unsoft-ened rectangle of wood that makes up the chest top.

Shaker furniture - with its unadorned squares, rectangles and cylinders - forces us to look

with fresh eyes at the fundamental shapes which, combined, make up a piece of furniture. In Shaker hands, these shapes were not simply blank canvas se s on which the craftsman could seduce the eye with carving, veneering and moulding. They are shapes worthy of our appreciation in their own right. There is beauty in a simple rectangle, in a simple square, in a simple circle. Shaker Brothers Calvin Green and Seth Youngs Wells explained it this way in "A Summary View of the Millennial Church or United Society of Believers," published in 1823: "Any thing may, with strict propriety, be called perfect, which perfectly answers the purpose for which it was designed. A circle may be called a perfect circle when

it is perfectly round____" It is the

pursuit of this state of fundamental perfection - coupled with the primacy of function - that distinguishes the best Shaker work.

There are, of course, some details of Pleasant Hill furniture in which craftsmen deviated from this focus on basic forms. Many of the early chests of drawers have turned feet, which present a succession of coves and beads that seem out of place on a piece that otherwise exhibits little embellishment. Each foot of the chest of drawers at left includes a pair of wide coves, each topped by a narrow bead.

In addition, each of the drawer fronts is framed in a scratched narrow bead meant to simulate a decorative effect seen on much high-style furniture of the period. High-style furniture often featured drawer fronts framed in thin mitered strips tacked in place so that the front edge of these strips - rounded to a bead - was standing proud of the drawer front. Sometimes these strips, called cock beading, were tacked to the drawer front itself. Sometimes they were

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102 Popular Woodworking February 2006