The term Shaker is sometimes seen as denoting a furniture period, like Queen Anne or Chippendale, but although Shaker furniture making is a genre built to a set of aesthetic principles identifiably different than those of other genres of furniture making, the Shaker genre is not based, even loosely, on a historical period.
Shaker furniture making existed outside American furniture periods, running sometimes concurrently with them, sometimes trailing well after the fact. Nevertheless, like the country furniture tradition in which it is most deeply rooted, Shaker furniture making drew deeply from the high-style period furniture made in the American urban centers, borrowing forms and design motifs, translating them in the light of the Shaker aesthetic.
Shaker tables, for example, often exhibit straight leg tapers much like Hepplewhite tables of the…
