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XIII. Pleasant Hill Frescoes
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152 RESTORING SHAKERTOWN 152 CHAPTER XIII Pleasant Hill Frescoes W e want you to take in everything,” says the interpreter in the full-skirted costume, urging us to attend the session of Shaker song and then the discussion of theology before returning to the Centre Family House for the tour. “The architecture and the furnishings are interesting, and the way they lived is interesting, too.” Although we appreciate her friendly suggestions, we decide to poke in elsewhere and see what goes on in the various demonstration areas before coming back in an hour. . . . We walk over to the East Family Wash House, where we see the original “arches”—the cauldrons in which the Shaker women (yes, the women did the laundry) boiled the water they used—and the clever devices that protected the women from burns. “Each family dwelling had its own wash house,” the demonstrator explains. “The sisters here would be washing for about seventy or eighty people. You always got your own clothes back from the laundry; you had your initials on everything.” Pointing to the tubs, she says that “they washed in one and rinsed in the other. They changed jobs the first Saturday of every month, so they didn’t always do the laundry.” Thus a woman might spin or weave one month and do laundry duty the next. . . . In a neighboring shop we meet the “silk ladies,” who tell us about caterpillars and silkworms, and buttress their discussion by displaying tiny eggs for the incubation of these valuable worms. “You can put lots and lots 153 Pleasant Hill Frescoes of them in a small mason jar,” says one of the silk ladies; she’s right—there are hundreds of them inside. The end result of this animal farming will be beautiful, soft-hued yarn. . . . We chat with another craftsman, the village cooper, who is finishing up a noggin as we come in and tells us all about noggins, piggins, and firkins—all the buckets of different sizes the Shakers made and used. As he taps away with his hammer while talking about the practical habits of the Shakers, he comments that “there are things you just can’t get out of a book.” In Shaker days, he says, the shop turned out a couple of thousand pieces a year—a good record. “Just sitting down and making something like a spoon out of a good piece of wood,” he says, “gives me a satisfying feeling.”. . . We move along to the East Family Brethren’s Shop, and right away we are watching and listening carefully as a craftsman makes a delicate oval box, explaining each step as he proceeds. “What I’m doing,” he tells his audience, “is trying to copy what the Shakers were doing. By the 1840s and ’50s they had monopolized the market, and all those little boxes they made became known as the Shaker box. By the end of the Civil War they had been replaced by tin cans, and the boxes were relegated to the gift shop.” This craftsman bases himself in the 1840s, and we learn, for example, that though sandpaper was known at the time, it was little used; the Shakers did the job with scrapers. . . . Then, across the hall, we watch an elderly and very enthusiastic craftsman show his audience how the Shakers made brooms. “What they didn’t sell around here,” he says, “they put on a boat and sent down the river, all the way to New Orleans.” These brooms were, of course, among the most famous and popular of all the Shaker products. Using machines that look like nothing you ever saw, the broommaker displays impressive deftness, and something about the smell of the broom grass gives the experience a special touch of authenticity. . . . In the East Family Sisters’ Shop we hear discussion of the finer points of spinning and weaving. . . . We walk along to the Farm Deacon’s Shop to look at the display of Shaker herbs and hear how the Believers used them and packaged and sold them. . . . We go into the Water House, remembering how it was restored on the impetus of Pansy Poe and again, as every- [18.234.232.228] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:13 GMT) 154 RESTORING SHAKERTOWN where in the village, admiring the ingenuity set free by the Shaker view of the world. . . . Returning to the Centre Family House, we make up part of a group that receives a thorough tour from bottom to top, seeing...