Professor Sharon

What a great day! Sitting and listening at conferences is always somehow wearying and exhilarating at the same time!

Today’s lectures started with two that were really a pair as they were presented by the authors of a great new book about a particular Shaker collector couple:

Book: Gather up the Fragments: The Andrews Shaker Collection by Mario S. De Pillis and Christian Goodwillie

The lecture by Professor De Pillis shared with us the aspects of how this collection and this couple became a turning point of the culture of Shakers being recognized as important to historians and collectors. The second half given by Mr. Goodwillie focused on the relationship between the Shaker community of Hancock and the Andrews. It’s too complicated to explain here, but I’ll quote from page 52 a passage by Professor De Pillis “As an old friend of the Andrews and as a fellow board member at Hancock Shaker Village, Inc., I accepted the invitation to write this essay as a moral duty: to cut through the gossip and amateurism of the so-called World of Shaker and provide a sympathetic but objective account of the Andrews and their collection.”

In addition to the two essays, there is another by M. Stephen Miller, as well as dozens of pages of photographs of beautiful artifacts, furniture, tools and more that the Andrews collected, thus “saving a culture.”

The afternoon sessions were as follows:

Put a Cap on It: Chastity and the Shaker Cap by Glendyne Wergland, and

Zion’s Travelers: Traveling to the Shaker West by Carol Medlicott.

I do a dis-service to any of these researchers by attempting to summarize their work. If you are interested in more, let me know or contact Hancock Shaker Village. It is my understanding that there may be some proceedings published afterwards; or perhaps they can provide a way for you to contact the presenters.

I’ve been interested for a long time in the children brought up by the Shakers, and I continue to scribble notes and give it a bit of thought about how to go about focusing my interest. This summer I read a history of education (sorry I don’t have that reference with me at the moment) and I’m very interested in the mid-1800s in terms of how schooling was changing and thus changing the lives of how children were educated. Maybe one day I’ll have enough information and research under my belt to actually write an article! For now, I’ll keep reflecting and keeping notes about how to think about it!

And, of course, at seminar:

we eat:

we sing:

we talk:

and greatly enjoy one another’s company!