Shaker Colors

In 1774 an illiterate, pious and fervent young woman from Manchester England, led a handful of followers to the New World to seek religious freedom and freedom from persecution. Her name was Ann Lee and she founded a new Protestant sect that later became known as The Shakers. In their day, there were thousands of Shakers and many communities throughout NY and New England. Now there are 3. That's 3 people not communities. They lived communally and prided themselves on their hard work and piousness. The Shakers became known for their magnificent design of objects: Shaker furniture, baskets and boxes are highly collectible.  Even today, Shaker is one of the most popular kitchen cabinet styles.

Cindy Dickinson, Education Director at Shaker Hancock Village in the Berkshires of MA, joins me for a conversation about the Shakers. We dive into the Shaker colors, how they were used and what makes them so arresting. 

Amy:

Color is the foundation of great design.  It can settle a building into its landscape. It can make an unattractive structural detail just disappear.  And it can change your mood in a room instantly.  Welcome to Let's Talk Color.  I'm Amy Krane, architectural color consultant at Amy Krane Color. I'm a color expert and use color to transform spaces and products from the ordinary to the sublime. As a paint color specialist, realtor, and design writer, I've got my finger on the pulse of what's happening in the world of color.  In each episode, I'll reveal best practices for choosing color by introducing you to masters of color for the built world.  So throw out those paint chips taped to your walls and let's get started.

I consider myself lucky to be living in the northern Hudson Valley of New York. And one reason for that is my proximity to preserved Shaker villages. There's one in Colonie which is next to Albany, and it's the site of the original Shaker settlement in the US, although it wasn't called that then. There's also one in New Lebanon, New York, but my favorite is the Hancock Shaker Village in Hancock, Mass. In the Berkshires. They call that community the city of heavenly peace.  I can't tell you how many photos of that salmon pink building I have taken while driving past.  Today's conversation, so timely because of the release of the new film, The Testament of Anne Lee, is going to center on Shaker design, more specifically Shaker colors. And for that, I have the pleasure of speaking with Cindy Dickinson, the Director of Education at the Hancock Shaker Village, a consummate public educator Dickinson holds undergrad degrees from Princeton University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as a master's in early American culture from the prestigious Winterthur program at the University of Delaware. I love Winterthur. Welcome, Cindy.

Cindy:

Thank you. It's nice to be here.

Amy:

It's about 14 degrees here. It's a good day to be talking about color.  Are there any shakers left in the United States?

Cindy:

There are, there is one active community in Maine, in Sabbathday Lake, Maine, just north of Portland.  And they welcomed a new member, a prospective member, this year. So they are still happy to have people join them and they are happy to have people learn about the Shakers, their history and their current practice.

Amy:

Oh, how fantastic.  Give us the basics. Who were they, where did they come from, when did they come and why did they come?

Cindy:

The Shakers are a Protestant Christian religion. They started out in England in the mid 18th century at a time when there were a number of people dissatisfied with the religion of the state and with the religious experience that it offered. So they're one of a number of dissenting groups that ultimately found the opportunity to come to America to practice their religion. They came in 1774 after a couple of members having visions that freedom in America would be the right pursuit. So they arrived in New York City in August, and then after a couple of years made their way up to the Watervliet community area that you mentioned.  And from there, their leader, Anne Lee, made a pilgrimage throughout New England and met up with many potential followers and followers and ultimately there were, depending on who you talk to, 19 to 25 communities throughout the Northeast and even a couple in the South, shorter lived, and one in Philadelphia. So at its height, there are five or 6,000 Shakers, practicing Shakers, in the mid-19th century.

Amy:

That's amazing. So when they first joined in the beginning, of course, they would have joined as families, but we're not going to go too deeply into their rules and regulations, although I'd like to hear a little.  One of the rules or tenets was celibacy. So after a generation or so, unless there were new families joining, there would have been fewer and fewer kids, right?

Cindy:

Yes. So one of the principal tenets of the Shaker religion is the practice of celibacy. They believed in leading a sinless life, and for them, that includes the practicing sex. It also relates to intimate relationships of any sort because the greatest good is  the good of the union of the community. So it does to people on the outside feel like that's a model for decline. But when I think of it, knowing the number of different groups that were forming at this time that may or may not have practiced celibacy, they are actually a survival group. In spite of celibacy, they are still here with us today. So they always hoped that adult converts would join. In the 19th century, they did begin having children, taking in children to live with them, sort of like a foster care situation, sometimes not full adoption but really living in the community until they reach the age to make the decision whether or not they would become Shakers themselves. Only about 10 % of the children raised by Shakers did become adult full members of the community. So those 10 % of course did help to continue the numbers for a while.  But  I think the Shakers have had to reckon at different points in their history with the whether or not celibacy was the way to continue and they have always come down on the side of that is a central part of our beliefs.

Amy:

Did you think that the film, The Testament of Anne Lee was accurate in many areas? Did it diverge from reality greatly? Creative license and all that?

CIndy:

I was deeply impressed by the movie. From my understanding of the Shakers, I feel that it captures a lot about their passion and beliefs that can be difficult to convey to a visitor when you're walking through buildings and objects that certainly have a lot to share. But the sort of vitality of the film, certainly the writers took some liberties with how the story was told, understandably. And I thought even in those alterations, for example, of the timeline, Mother Anne would not have seen the communities come together in the way that she's depicted seeing them. I thought that what they were really portraying was what she spawned, you know, that she, this is what her general goal was.  And so I liked the way that they combined them. I certainly would not want to...  I'm not speaking for the Shakers because as a non-Shaker, I understand their theology from a certain distance.  So the accuracies of the interpretation of the theology, I won't comment on.  I thought that especially the use of the music was very well done and well-handled and very true to the essence of the melodies that were used. Almost all the songs are Shaker songs that are in that film. And the way they combined the experience of being a Shaker with some of the real historical issues they dealt with, persecution and taking a ship over to a new country.  I thought that was all very well done and compelling for me as someone who really admires the Shakers and is interested in their origin story.

Amy:

In the very beginning, I think she was only here for 10 years,  in the  early years of the Shakers, let's call that 50 years, for argument's sake, do you think there was great difference in how each community practiced, how they looked, how they practiced, how they treated one another, how they treated outsiders? How much variety do you think there was? 

Cindy:

That's a really good question.  And frankly, I think addressing what you just asked about is one key thing that has led to the Shakers thriving in the 19th century and still being here today. Because from the very beginning, after the initial Mother Anne pilgrimage, they insisted on the need for uniformity among the different communities. And you can imagine it was difficult to necessarily achieve, but they knew that if the experience wasn't similar, you just start to have a more chaotic experience at each one. And particularly after Mother Anne died, those early second generation leaders really pulled together what it meant to be a Shaker almost institutionally.  So not just spiritually.  That was when they kind of started thinking about, what should the worship experience be like? Because up until then, it was a fairly spontaneous, a truly spirit-driven  experience.  And they began to realize that if we took our music and our movements and formalized them in a way that people could learn so that it becomes something you can teach, then the worship experience might resemble something that a potential convert. And likewise, living in community together, realizing that that, so that was not a Mother Anne idea, the communal living. That's a second generation idea because it's easier to live in this different way. You're living in celibate life, you're supposed to be nice to everybody, your worship looks different, and if you come together, there's more protection in that. And then there also, of course, is the opportunity that you've got working hands who can labor together to recreate heaven together. So I think the experience once Mother Anne had died and those who were left knew they wanted to continue her legacy was fairly uniform, as uniform as you can have when you're geographically distant, experience.

Amy:

So early on was there was communication among the villages?

Cindy:

Early on, there was travel by certain leaders so that there could be some consistency and understanding of what it meant to be a Shaker.

Amy:

Can you tell us why they were called Shakers?

Cindy:

Yes. That's a very good question. They did not call themselves Shakers. They called themselves the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. They're considered a millennialist group that are living into the Second Coming. The way they worshiped was divine revelation of the Spirit directly through the body. So if God spoke to one of them and they were filled with the Spirit, they would move.  And although they have some similarities with the Quakers, they apparently moved a lot more than the Quakers. So they were not quaking, they were shaking. So they were called the shaking Quakers. Like the Quakers, the Shakers also believed that you don't need a trained spiritual guide to tell you what God intends for you. So God can speak directly to you. It doesn't matter if you're a male or female. There's direct connection to the divine. So they were the shaking Quakers. And then that got shortened to Shakers. And the believers, the people who were being called this, at some point realized that the word itself was a shorter word than United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing and when they began marketing products that they made, they used that word on their, as kind of almost like their brand.  Within the community, they would have referred to each other as believers. But so that's where the name comes from. And then now they actually are incorporated as the United Society of Shakers.

Amy:

You sort of hit on this, but give us just the basic beliefs, or as they came to be. 

So, communal living and spirituality through work? What other kinds of things?

Cindy:

So, usually it was described as the three C's. Celibacy we've discussed,  communal living and then confession. They do believe in periodic cleansing. Which includes bringing to light the things that you are not doing well or doing wrong, almost like a cognitive therapy session where if you have an issue and you need to discuss it with someone so that you can overcome it. The sins are not dismissed. You work on what you can do to achieve  a more pure life. The Shakers also are pacifists. They share that with some of their Quaker comrades. They believe in equality and equality for all  regardless of gender, race, ability, anyone who accepts the beliefs of the Shakers is welcome. Because laboring was very important.  All work was a form of worship. So there wasn't just the Sunday morning service, there were actual meetings, gatherings each day, but throughout the day, you were also worshiping God in the way that you did the work that was assigned to you. So that kind of leads to another belief, which is perfection, the purpose of the Shakers is to reflect the perfection of heaven so that when they get there, they're already working towards that ultimate end. And that also does play into their design and what I think a lot of us admire about it is everything is so well done. Well, it's well done because heaven doesn't have dirt, heaven doesn't have mistakes. Heaven has the best of what we can offer. And so that motivation is there in everything that they do.

Amy:

Okay. Well, this is a great segue into talk about their design. If I was to ask where their aesthetic was from, I guess you've kind of answered a little bit, not in terms of its exact look, but they're striving for perfection.  Was there one or a few Shakers who created the design aesthetic or did it evolve over time from contributions from different people in different communities?

Cindy:

I love that question. I've been thinking about that.  There are certainly a couple of individuals you can point to for certain aspects of Shaker design, but generally speaking, I think that what we call Shaker design is not something that the Shakers set out to create. Because the last thing they would want to do is create an aesthetic.  Because they're all about what something actually means and stands for. And so I think that early on, even as their communities were forming, the communities were formed from land and structures donated when groups joined the group. So our Hancock, for example, there were five key families that joined the Shakers that were landholders. And so the community is based on that acreage, that combined acreage and the buildings that were part of it. So over time, as those buildings proved inadequate or they grew, they had to then build new structures. And that's when you begin to see an architecture, more of a uniformity of the buildings. And I think the same is true for things like furniture and household goods. You're coming into the community with what you already own. And then as those need to be adapted or perfected, you start to have  some changes in design. And then you also want to create a uniform experience. So when you've decided on a chair type that seems to work best, you're going to continue to create that because you need to have this universal experience. So in terms of individuals, there is someone to mention on the architecture front. Moses Johnson is a Shaker brother from Enfield, New Hampshire, who is responsible for the design of the early Shaker meeting house.

Amy:

With the Gambrel roof, right?

Cindy:

Yes, the Gambrel roof. Exactly. So early on when I was mentioning about the need for the villages to be similar,  the meeting house was a central building for each community. So each community was to have the gambrel roof, rectangular white clapboard building with doors on either end for sisters and brothers to come in and then doors for the world's people to observe the worship. I should say that Worship for the Shakers was both a central spiritual practice, but also a key way to attract converts. So their Sunday morning worship was, for most of the period of their history, open to the public to attend, not to participate in, but to attend, so that they could get a sense of the real essence of what it was to be a Shaker. So that meeting house, even though I have said that they were worshiping all the time, the meeting house experience was very critical for them.  And a meeting house is what they would not have had already  on their sites as they were accumulating their land and so forth. So having that same design of a meeting house throughout the communities was important. And this is in the late 18th century. Moses Johnson is one of the few Shakers you'll hear named, whereas a design is attributed to him. 

Amy:

Over time, we've attributed the lack of ornamentation to be equivalent with the Shakers. In the 21st and 20th century, it has been so collectible and so kind of revered by design enthusiasts. It really seems to connect with people. The design itself having nothing to do with who the Shakers were or anyone's knowledge of what their practices were or anything. It's interesting to me how popular it's become.  You know, I'm a color consultant and I often end up working with people on kitchen design.  And  especially living in the country, but even other places, the most popular  kitchen cabinet door is the Shaker style, which does have four rails around it.  It has simple ornamentation. Let's talk about the colors. So covering architecture colors, interior and exterior, and then of course, I'm sure that the objects didn't diverge that much from that.  What are the basic Shaker colors?

Cindy:

Okay. So basic Shaker colors include a couple of types of yellow.  One is often called chrome yellow, and then the other is just yellow. Yellow ochre, sometimes called the ochre. There is also a green, a chrome green that appears more in the interior, on the furniture, the beds. That's kind of a famous edict we can discuss. One of the examples of a effort at uniformity across the communities was that beds needed to be painted green. Red ochre is often seen architecturally on some of the buildings. Some of the buildings are white, meeting houses were to be white.  There is some evidence that  only meeting houses were to be white, but there is a lot of evidence even here at the village where we have other white buildings. So over time, some of this changed. Prussian blue, very important in the meeting house interior as a color that was seen there and used sparingly, but in important ways. And then you've already referred to the salmon or the pink color that here at the village is used on our horse barn. But that color also can be seen on some objects and in some other applications. Those are the key colors that you'll see in Shaker community. And you see them in a very pure way. They're rarely mixed or blended or broken up with ornamentation or decoration. So I have a feeling that's another reason why they're so striking is that you see a palette, it's the full color and not broken up by much. The Shaker communities were almost always on a major road. They're rarely set away. They needed to be found because they were not proselytizing. They didn't go out seeking members. So they kind of needed you to take notice. And I wonder, too, if one element of that was the color on the architecture, let's make sure our buildings are noticed.

Amy:

I read that color and divinity were very linked together from early on. They were separate from the way other people lived in the world, and maybe color was used to. to exemplify that separateness from how other people lived.  When you were saying  before, not breaking up the colors, it's so interesting because, again, talking about exterior colors, during different periods of time,  people would highlight the trim on their house with another color.  But... for many years through different periods, they did not.  And there is a resurgence now in the past 20 years or so, again, for country houses, for the trim to match the body of the house.  And certainly, that was the case back then, that they did not create more ornamentation by calling out the trim boards with a different color. Maybe they did with the doors. I think I saw a picture of a yellow building with green doors. Do you know whether doors were often painted a different color or not, exterior?

Cindy:

Based on my observation,  I believe you are correct because I'm just thinking about the village. Yes, the meeting house has doors that are not white. The dwelling certainly has doors that are different color. Let me check the millennial laws.

Amy:

Okay, well, that's a great segue into the millennial laws.  What were they in general, very briefly, and then specifically how were they related to what we're talking about  -colors in buildings, on buildings, on objects?

Cindy:

The millennial laws, are a group of basically a code of conduct that the Shakers first issued in 1821. So about 30 years after they had really come together as communities and then revised and reissued in 1845 and finally in 1860. The 1845 edition is the most specific. It's the longest and it comes at a time in the Shaker world when things were sort of falling apart. They were losing members, there was a tremendous period of spiritual revival, but this was also kind of an effort to gain more followers. So as is often the case when rules are promulgated, it suggests that something is not going right. So usually you need a rule to do something or not do something because everyone is doing the opposite. And I think that could be the case even with building design and color that maybe people were getting a little bit too into a different kind of yellow or maybe the blue was being misapplied.  But certainly, in terms of behavior between the sexes, there's a lot of that in the 1845 laws as well. By 1860,  there aren't too many laws so I guess people were perhaps following them a little better, but you can't imagine that when you have all of these people living so far apart and you're essentially communicating through letter and occasional visits that you've got to have something to refer to, to say, well, look, a  true Shaker community is going to have this color paint on your beds. So let's get our act together. So in the millennial laws from 1845 they do have a section that is called concerning building painting varnishing and the manufacture of articles for sale so I'm just I thought I would share just a few of these things.

The meeting house should be painted white without and of a bluish shade within houses and shops, and in this case shops are referring to workshops where people would make things not  retail establishments, should be as near uniform in color and consistent. But it is advisable to have shops of a little darker shade than dwelling houses. Floors in dwelling houses, if stained at all, should be of a reddish yellow and shop floors should be of a yellowish red.  It is unadvisable for wooden buildings fronting the street to be painted red, brown, or black, but they should be of a lightish hue. No buildings may be painted white save meeting houses. And then it kind of goes on to talk about whether you could paint your carts or varnish these things.  So  something about that suggests that there was perhaps less conformity with color in 1844 than the Shakers thought there ought to be. But it is interesting that they're discussing a hierarchy of building to be shown through color.

Amy:

Yes, it really is. Back then Prussian blue was one of the only synthetic pigments made.. And I've read that it was $12 a pound. Back then, that is fabulously expensive. White would have been super cheap, like a dollar or something. And of course, a lot of the colors, which I've read that they foraged and rounded up as many pigments as they could for making dyes and maybe paints. And those things like ochres, red ochres, yellow ochres, umbers and siennas, I mean, these came from minerals and were very plentiful and inexpensive. And once you got into your chromes, I think you were into more expensive things. So I also was reading a little bit that the, there were these gift paintings, right?

Cindy:

Of course, these are gift paintings.

Amy:

But I mean, apparently they did feel that there were associations between colors and concepts. Green is a sign of increase or growth. Red, suffering. White, purity. Blue, heavenly. Peach- blue. I do not know what that is,  Love. Gold, purity. Silver, union. So that's all very, very interesting that they really felt the need and desire to connect colors with concepts,  all tied into their practice, their religious practice, their beliefs. I think we could describe their aesthetic as being sort of streamlined and simple, almost austere. So don't you think it's interesting that a lot of these colors are so bold and saturated? I mean, you could almost interpret them, at least today, as decorative just because they're so highly chromatic. You know, it's a bold yellow, it's a bold salmon, it's a bold blue. It's so interesting to me because the colors becomes decorative. And yet they were, I think of them as a somewhat austere group. But maybe I shouldn't think of them as austere. Maybe the way that they, their spirituality maybe wasn't austere at all. Maybe the colors were a representation of their joy. 

Cindy:

I think you're doing a wonderful job of understanding the Shakers by using color as an example. Because I think that what happens a lot of times, those of us who aren't part of a group like this or when we're looking particularly at something in the past where I know not just with the Shakers, but even I think with the Greeks and Roman, you know, this idea that, they didn't have any color. Well, maybe it's because it faded or, you know, it got covered up. And the idea that people have lived without color is not, it's obviously not true. And I think you're articulating what is often misunderstood about the Shakers, which is although they are leading a life that is regulated and has intention and feels to many of us outside it like it must be a struggle, they were ecstatically joyful about this experience. And so the singing and the movement is all about feeling at  one with each other and one with God. And it's not a religion of punishment. I think a lot of times when we feel like, people aren't doing a certain thing, especially if they're celibate, you know, they must be punishing themselves. And there is some degree of that, but for the most part, it's all about finding the joy in life. And so what you're helping me see by describing the color in this way is that that's yet another example of how they present the world. The gift drawings that you mentioned are a really good. way to tie in the color that you see in the buildings and the objects because the gift drawings also come from around the same time as the millennial laws when there was a lot of spiritual revival and effort to kind of reinvigorate the religion. And one thing that happened during this period, which is between 1830 and 1860, is that individual people who are called instruments, just to be confusing, were receiving messages from the spirit world that they then interpreted for the people on Earth. So these instruments weren't necessarily telling people what to do, but they were hearing from Mother Anne, who was deceased, or random person X, that persevered, So you can live on, and there were very specific messages, but they often were accompanied with an image. So that's where you get the image of the tree of life or an image of a basket of apples. These had very specific purposes, but they're watercolors. And so they have a lot of color in them, but the color is, as you described, it tends to be a certain pure color as opposed to a lot of mixing of the colors and gradations. So when you were talking, it's reminding me of when you got the Jumbo crayon set from Crayola and you've kind of got the same palette in some ways, and  you can still do a lot with that, and it's the joy that children have of kind of starting out with color that expresses, and so each color seems to have a purpose. And I think that that's what you're helping to articulate, is that's how color works for the Shakers. 

Amy:

Can we talk a little bit about the paints back then? I mean, I think the paints were just Pigments with linseed oil, at least in the beginning. Any idea about them? Well, I mean you mentioned the Prussian blue. So that was something they had to buy

Cindy:

So there was an interesting development in Shaker color history. It’s the examination of the paints. Starting in the 1990s with Susan Buck did some analysis of about a hundred objects and they were doing some very interesting work with that. Then since that time, I know here at Hancock, we've had all of our building’s paint analysis done, and we've returned the colors of all the buildings to their “original colors.” So, you know, the colors that the Shakers were using at their height. So that effort to kind of restore the color palette is something that over the last 30 years has been worked on.  What I've come to understand and I am not a paint expert or a scientist is the Shakers, as with other people, kind of followed trends. So if everyone was making paint like out in the world, they would have been making their own paints. But as soon as paint was available to purchase or pigments, they would also be doing that because, it's not a... theological tenant, but the Shakers were very practical people. So using technology, purchasing something that might make their lives more efficient is something that they were willing to do. So it seems to be a mix of sources of their paints, in terms of purchasing the oil to make the paints, the pigments to make the paints, and then ultimately purchasing the paints themselves. So by the second half of the 19th century, they were certainly buying paint. I think there's a little bit of debate about  how much they were gathering,  or mining ore to get ochre, which does not seem to be so much the case.  But with dye and clothing dye, they were growing, certainly growing plants for that purpose, gathering those. So different sources for their colors. But we even have some pigments in our collection. They're not dated, and then there are recipe books in the Shaker archives. The Shakers were actively making paints and varnishes.  Another thing that seems to distinguish the Shakers from perhaps other municipal groups is the constant effort of upkeep. So the shakers are regularly repainting their architectural elements. They're cleaning them because again, this need for perfection. So that seems to be something that sets them apart a bit - the attention to maintenance that then shows up in the materials if you're looking at different paint layers.

Amy:

Tell me, overall, and I don't know if there was variety or not, would you say during their heyday for 100, 150 years, whatever, did they make enough money to live as well as they wanted to? Were they impoverished or were they perfectly self-sufficient in terms of what they needed and what they got by their own hands or by their ability to buy?

Cindy:

By the early-ish 19th century, they were doing well. And I think, again, that's something that's important to understand about the Shakers. In the early days, so... the Mother Anne era,  this is graphically depicted in the  movie, it was a struggle.  Even food was difficult to come by, but as they gathered in community and as they had labor to work, they were able not only to provide for their basic needs, but to live well. One of my favorite examples of this is a clothing inventory that was kept.  You might think, they're each wearing one outfit and that's all they have. No, the Shakers individually had several dresses, lots of undergarments. They were well cared for because again, they weren't about living a life with nothing. They were about living as they should.  To  take care of themselves, they wanted to be healthy.  And in some ways, being able to change your clothes does make you a healthier person. Being able to do laundry helps with health. So they did live comfortably, yes. And because they were, again, not about suffering for their faith. They didn't want anything that they didn't need.  But that didn't mean that they had to be uncomfortable.

Amy:

Got it. Any idea if they sold their paint formulas or paint itself? to non-Shakers? 

Cindy:

I'm not an expert in that area.  It doesn't seem to have been a key, one of their hot sellers. It doesn't mean that they never did that, but it doesn't seem to have been one of their main items for market. However, I was reading something that suggested some of the same ingredients go into the medicinal herbs or dye manufacturing that might also go into a paint or a varnish. I’m not suggesting that they were selling paint to cure an illness. But if they're buying stuff in large quantity, it could have been used for that purpose as well.  But principally, their principal businesses had to do with seeds, medicinal herbs, and then for some communities, the manufacture of goods like the chairs or oval boxes and then fancy goods later on. But paint does not seem to have been a major part of that economy.

Amy:

So you mentioned some of the communities sold objects while others didn't. I wonder if we know why and also was it considered sort of a necessary evil? to fraternize with the outside world by selling your stuff? Did they sell reluctantly because they had to or no? Was it like, hey, this is great. We're happy to share our objects. It tells people more about who we are and maybe brings them here and things like that.

Cindy:

I think the latter is the principal motivation that once they began to do well and were making or growing in excess, they did not want to be wasteful. Sharing or selling the goods was a way to, again, this goes to practicality, it was a way to generate some income for the community, but to not waste the item and to spread the name of the Shakers because, contrary to a model that works for other religions, going out and proselytizing is not what they chose to do. But their products kind of took on that role. So there were people designated to go out into the world to sell, especially the seeds, the seeds of the earliest business starting in the late 18th century.  And those people had to interact with the world. So they had to be trustworthy to maintain their Shaker identity out in the world. So I think they dealt with some issues of back and forth into the world, but not to the point that it wasn't worth it to have these product lines.  And I think that as people, because they were made so well, even the seeds were, they grew into the plants that the package said, that quality, that association of Shaker with quality became very important. Anything they made really was met  by the market favorably. And I think the Shakers, they needed money in some ways so that they could purchase things that they might need that they couldn't make. They tried to make as much of their own as they could. For example, once it was just cheaper to purchase fabric after the Civil War they would buy cloth to make clothing. But up until then, they were making their own. So it depended. I think that their interaction with the world is really interesting and that kind of choice to engage on the market level, but then not in other ways.  It just, again, sets them up as something really interesting to study and wonder about. 

Amy:

There's no way of knowing how the general public reacted to their colors specifically. Is there?

Cindy:

There is some evidence that people could visit the villages. I think there is some evidence that they found the communities striking, you know, the way the buildings were arranged. I don't have a specific info about the public’s reaction to the colors.  But I think the whole package was interesting to visitors for sure.

Amy:

Got it. Who makes your paint now when you had to repaint?

Cindy:

We do have a list of  our paint colors that we use and when our paint analysis was first done, we were then given a set of Benjamin Moore equivalents to those colors. My understanding now is there are different apps that you can use to simply take a picture of an existing paint color and they get a color matched. So that is what sometimes happens here. We hire different painting crews. So they will work with our existing buildings to match the paint color.

Amy:

So that's really interesting. I mean, Benjamin Moore has 3,500 colors, but that does not mean they have exactly that salmon pink. So once Susan Bock discovered what that's... salmon pink looked like. I mean, do you think going back, anyone went to Benjamin Moore and said,  replicate exactly this original color? Or people just kind of eyeballed it and said, well, that salmon pink looks like Benjamin Moore's blah, blah, blah. Let's use it.

Cindy:

I was not at the village at the time but I'm not sure that Susan did all of our paint analysis for the village. But we also had a relationship with the University of Massachusetts and some students also got involved with some color analysis with some of the buildings. But we do have this list that we've generally worked with. So that salmon color is in the Benjamin War world is called Antique Rose. So it must have had a similar enough composition that it seemed good to use. And you had asked if we have visitors ask about our colors now, and yes, all the time. And that's one of the colors that people do like, because it's unexpected. And then the yellows.

Amy:

As I mentioned, I did see the film. You know, I saw that tree of life on the walls inside the meeting room?  I'm going to assume that they did not request to change anything, and nor would you have let them.

Cindy:

So that building where you see the tree of life, that is one set piece that they built  when they were filming in Hungary. The shots shot at the village, no, as far as I know, there were no changes to the interiors of that nature. So all the colors that you see in the buildings, the shots done at Hancock are as the buildings are. But the meeting house, they did recreate over there. And that interior is, because the Shakers would not have put an image on the wall like that. So I am interested in finding out the choice of doing that, because that is a Shaker gift drawing done by Hannah Cahoon,  who was a member of the Hancock community. And I love that gift drawing, but it would not have been on the wall. The walls were never decorated. No. And they would not have hung  paintings on the wall. Not until the late 19th century. So the Shakers, having said they didn't put anything on their walls, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, the Shakers did use wallpaper. The Shakers changed their own aesthetic to attract new people. They were trying to liven up in a way that might be more attractive to someone from the outside. So there is evidence of wallpaper and some hanging images on the walls for decoration in that later period. The museums now, at least here, tend to go back to an earlier 19th century aesthetic so that you don't see decoration on the walls. So there is a little bit of that, but certainly at that time, that the film's depicting, would not have it. And the gift drawings were not intended as artwork, so they would never have hung on the walls. In fact, they were in a drawer when some of the early collectors came through Hancock and just kind of discovered them. And one of the Shakers said, oh yes, well, we have those too, but they were not framed.  They had never been displayed. So we as an outside society have come to honor them as works of art. But again, the Shakers, these were spiritual messages.

Amy:

Interesting. This has been so fascinating, Cindy. I can't thank you enough.

Cindy:

Oh, thank you. Well, I've enjoyed it very much. You're very knowledgeable and I appreciate so much your thoughts about the Shakers.