Maple and pine box (5½” x 12½” x 9 ¼”) used by Sister Lucy Miller (Union Village, Ohio), with handwritten genealogy of the Miller family pasted inside the lid, early-mid 19th century.
Maggie Taft Lecture
Today, the Shakers are best known for the things they made like ladder back rocking chairs and oval boxes. But their most innovative creations were the radical communities in which they lived. Beginning in New England in the late 18th century, this millenarian group rejected private property and embraced gender and racial equality, making a way of living together that was rooted in mutual care. This talk considers familiar objects of Shaker design from new perspectives, looking at hidden markings and inscriptions inside of boxes and on the undersides of cabinet drawers, to consider the role that designed objects played in making communal life possible.
About Maggie Taft
From 2014-2016, Maggie Taft, PhD, served as a postdoctoral fellow in Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry at WashU. Now based in Chicago, she is the founding director of Writing Space, an organization that offers writing programming and resources to artists and designers. She is author of The Chieftain and the Chair: The Rise of Danish Design in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2023) and at work on a writing guide for artists and designers that is part practical guidebook to writing the kinds of texts creatives are frequently asked to produce and part meditation on how writing can serve a creative practice.
