What Is Shaker Style Railing?

Simple Gifts

• When the Shakers immigrated to the U.S., they established farms in New England that grew into communities composed of "families" of 50 to 150 people. The style of their handmade buildings, fittings and furniture reflected their ethos of the hymn "Simple Gifts." Freedom and simplicity were the gifts through which God's word became manifest and by attending to those gifts, they would find themselves in the "place just right." Far from being careless craftsmen, the shakers paid a great deal of attention to design and execution of those designs. The simplicity of their work reflects their beliefs.

Materials and Style

• The Shakers used materials at hand in the New England forests: maple, birch, chestnut, butternut and honey pine. Shaker craftsmen believed in the maxim of "form follows function," and their designs followed rules that emphasized order and durability. They avoided details that added nothing to their pieces' utility. Shaker craftsmen created two types of rails: stairway railings and peg rails. As with most of their furniture, railings were finished with furniture wax.

Stairway Railings

• Railings were round shapes that often followed stairs in a serpentine pattern, composed of carved pieces dovetailed together. The railing should be large enough to fit the hand but not so large that the hand might not grasp it easily. A second rail style is an oval shape, much as if the round rail had been flattened for smaller hands or to simplify joining. Rails ended in simple rail caps on top of newel posts, never with a turnout or volute, common terminations in colonial revival-style stairways. Balusters and newels might be turned in plain round posts without beadings or they might be carved square, similar to American Mission-style balusters and newels, but all balusters would match. The Trustee house at Pleasant Hill Kentucky contains two rare spiral staircases, each with plain, round balusters. Some staircases, such as the one in the schoolhouse at the Canterbury, New Hampshire, settlement, had railings sitting atop wainscoting that enclosed the stairway.

Peg Railings

• Peg rails served a multitude of purposes. Installed along walls at about the same height as the top of the windows, these plain boards often served as part of the window frame. Studded with handmade pegs tapped into the entire depth of the board, they held coats and hats for family members or raised chairs and other furniture up off the floor for activities or cleaning. Pegs were of a simple design with mushroom-shaped ends. The rail itself was a plain 1-by-4 inch or similar size board with holes drilled in the board to just fit the diameter of the tapered peg base, making glue unnecessary.