Furniture, like fashion, operates on a series of trends. For years, some sort of furniture can be popular and then just as quickly go out of style. The best way to prevent falling prey to a trend is to rely on a classic structure to your furniture that does not quickly become dated. One way to know if your furniture is going to be modern while still retaining a desirable look and feel is to look to classics that have never grown out of style. Contemporary furniture manufacturers like to rely on classic styles so that they can know what is going to be fresh in the future as well as right now. One such style is Shaker furniture.
Shakers
The Shakers are a religious sect that is officially known as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. They are commonly called the Shakers. They believe in utility, honesty, and simplicity. This belief in simple, utilitarian life is well reflected in the furniture they make. Their furniture is sturdy and well-made while still being of very minimalist design. Contemporary furniture manufacturers in Miami and around the world consider Shaker furniture to be one of the great movements in design.
The Shakers believed in maintaining self-sufficient communities. To do this, they grew food themselves, built their own houses and buildings, and built the furnishings for their houses. They built their own furniture as well. The furniture eschewed ornamentation such as filigrees, inlays, veneers, or carvings. These were seen as prideful or ostentatious. To create interesting pieces of furniture without being ostentatious or prideful, they developed solutions such as making the drawers asymmetrical which would draw the eye to the piece of furniture. They also did things such as create furniture that served multiple purposes. In this way, its uniqueness was in its utility.
Materials
Typically, Shaker furniture was made from cherry, pine, or maple woods. Contemporary furniture manufacturers still use these great mediums to create pieces of furniture. The simplicity of the style was also accented by the pulls for the drawers and cabinets and dressers. Instead of metal knobs or anything of that sort, the pulls were also made of wood. This created a unified look to the pieces. The pieces were then painted in one of the colors that were deemed acceptable by the Shakers. These colors were usually green, yellow, red, or blue.
Ladder Backs
The shakers are probably best known for their ladder back chairs. These are chairs that were built in the same utilitarian style as all of their others but the posts on the back were turned so that the chairs could be hung out of the way while not in use.
