Interesting article in The New Yorker about the celibate Shakers, their history, and their beautiful wood objects (save the jokes). I'm not sure what prompted Gopnik to write the piece, but it's different and--as always--well-written. Excerpt:
What also distinguished the Shakers was their odd join between violent anti-worldliness and thoroughgoing commercial materialism. Monks and monkish communities have, of course, sold goods to the world for a long time, from medieval cheese to Moonie cappuccinos. But the Shakers, faced with the need to support large communities, worked particularly hard to manufacture things for money. Many of the objects that we think of as archetypally Shaker–the long oval boxes with their lovely triple folds, the clean brooms and chairs–were designed and made largely for outside sale. With most tribes and sects that we look to as artistic innovators, the line between cult object and commodity product–between the true African fetish and airport art–is, if often far from sharp, at least tenable. It wasn't with the Shakers. Shaker style was a commodity almost as soon as Shakerism was a cult. Contrary to Thomas Merton's romantic assertion that each Shaker chair was made as though no other chair had been made before, Shaker chairs and other wooden objects were made in semi-industrial conditions for a growing middle-class market.
