Shaker “gift” drawings such as these from the 1840s and 50s are the only objects where Shakers used ornament or decoration. Only around 200 are known to exist and 25 of them are at Hancock Shaker Village in Massachusetts where I saw these. Today they’re called ‘gift drawings’ only because they’re referred to as gifts the few times they’re mentioned in journals, where ‘gift’ meant a spiritual message received supernaturally from deceased Believers. Otherwise we don’t know what the Shakers called them and in fact no record exists of the Shakers referring to them as drawings at all, or as art.
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