On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 20:04:11 -0700, Mark & Juanita
wrote:

Shaker is hand work trying to look like machine work, Craftsman is
machine-made trying to look like hand work.

I thought the Shakers did not eschew the use of machinery; they did shun
ostentation in their products. That's why you see wood knobs, lack of
carvings, etc.

Shakers certainly weren't anti-machinery, it's just that not much of it
had been invented by then. Even Babbitt's famous circular saw was still
only seen as a labour-saver for construction carpentry timber, not a
resaw for cabinetry.

The Shakers used hand tools (with great skill) and they aspired to the
sort of perfection of finish that we usually identify as "machine-made
quality" -- certainly in the early Victorian period when "machine made"
was an accolade found proudly stamped onto goods.

The Arts and Crafts movement is a late Victorian reaction, primarily to
the dehumanising effects of factory life on the workers. Ruskin and
Morris saw it less in terms of products and more in terms of those
involved. The later American A&C theorists attempted to recapture the
golden age of craft labour by the deliberate application of machines. If
you could make an honest product, then the assumption was that it would
generate honest employment and fair treatment of workers. At the same
time, the product was supposed to look as if it were hand-made and to
avoid all the gingerbread that Victorian machinery had been so good at
churning out.

The English A&C movement never took this line, even in the 20th century
(pre-war anyway). Gimson and the Barnsleys were adamant over the use of
hand tools, and the way that artisan craftsmanship was the only right
way for an artisan craftsman to be employed.