Hands to work, hearts to God — and a patent office they refused to use.
Shaker workmanship became a byword because the theology required honest work with no ornament and no deceit in construction. They ran the first commercial seed packet business in America and largely declined to patent their inventions, on the grounds that a monopoly on a useful thing was a form of theft.
Shaker design is not a style but a by-product of doctrine: ornament was vanity, deceit in construction was a lie, and a thing made well was made for the ages because the maker expected the community to last. The Millennial Laws of 1821, revised in 1845, legislated on colours, on the height of bedsteads, on picture frames — forbidden — and on how tools were to be hung. The society was also inventive and commercially serious: the flat broom, improvements to the washing machine and the circular saw, the first packaged garden seeds sold commercially in America from the 1790s, and a medicinal herb industry. Patents were mostly declined on principle, though not universally. Sabbathday Lake still runs a herb business and a farm. The furniture that sells at auction for six figures was made by people who owned nothing and expected the world to end in the way that it had already begun.
Tis the gift to be simple, tis the gift to be free, tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, and when we find ourselves in the place just right, twill be in the valley of love and delight.
Elder Joseph Brackett, Simple Gifts, Alfred, Maine, 1848A dancing song, not a hymn — the gift is a Shaker term for a spiritual instruction received in worship.
The same ground, other faiths
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