Shaker and Mission?

What are the main differences between these styles of furniture?

Thanks.

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Reply to
Stoutman
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See:

Mission Furniture:

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Furniture:

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Reply to
no(SPAM)vasys

Reply to
tom

Reply to
tom

It's me.

Looking at two pieces of furniture, one Shaker and one Mission, what would distinguish them?

Reply to
Stoutman

Reply to
tom

Please see original post.

Reply to
Stoutman

I think the best way to see the difference is to go to Google images and do searches such as "mission style chair" and "shaker chair" and compare what you see. The differences will become pretty apparent pretty quickly.

Mark

Reply to
Mark Wells

It's difficult to pinpoint the main differences because these styles evolved over time and differed between villages. There are probably more similarities than differences between these two styles.

Shaker lighter, fewer members religious belief influenced design furniture pieces used for tasks and work milk paints & hand-rubbed finishes

Mission stronger pieces often heavier somewhat crude design

Reply to
Phisherman

I'm no furniture critic but Shaker and Mission are very much different design styles and the differnece is rather dramatic. Just put a classic, taper-legged shaker end table next to a mission style end table and the styling difference will be obvious. Pictures are worth thousands of words here. I suggest checking google or dogpile image search on the 2 keywords and you'll get a good idea pretty quickly.

Reply to
lwasserm

Shaker is light and simple elegant typically cherry country furniture; from the same folks who gave us the song "Tis a gift to be simple tis a gift to be free, tis a gift to come down where we ought to be."

Mission is heavy usually quartersawn white oak, midwestern Arts & Farts response to the vulgar designs of the Victorian age.

Typical shaker chair might have clean turned legs, ladder back, cloth taped seat, a lady can carry it with one hand. Typical mission chair looks like it was built by a bricklayer, heavy fumed white oak stretchers and splats, requires two men and a boy to move it.

-- Timothy Juvenal

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Reply to
Hambone Slim

While having a similar discussion with a guy who made a Bombay Chest out of solid mahogany he cynically summed up Mission as follows: "You can shape all the pieces with your planner." As Tom points out there are simple curves and turnings associated with Shaker.

John

Reply to
John Grossbohlin

I'm partial to the Shaker style of design myself. I like your description of the typical characteristics!

Reply to
lwasserm

weight and the chairs tend to have a lot of spindles. Mission looks heavier, a little more complex visually, and typically built with Oak.

Reply to
Leon

I would like to try something in the Greene and Greene style. I would not use an abundance of inlays though. It is a compromise between Mission (aka Craftsman, Stickley, and such) and Shaker. I'm not implying that there is Shaker influence in G&G. I find Craftsman style to be a little heavy for my taste, but I have a strong respect for the style and there are pieces I like. I tend to like the pieces done in cherry.

Reply to
Lowell Holmes

... and that, apparently, was considered one of the pluses of it's near kin/predecessor, Arts and Crafts:

"Frank Lloyd Wright's lecture, "The Art and Craft of the Machine," delivered at the Chicago Society of Arts and Crafts in 1901, in which, after invoking the name of William Morris, he went on to declare: "The machine, by its wonderful cutting, shaping, smoothing, and repetitive capacity, has made it possible to so use it without waste that the poor as well as the rich may enjoy today beautiful surface treatments of clean, strong forms""

The essence of A&C, "Mission" being a close cousin of sorts, was to use the "machine" to relieve the tedium of repetitive, manual tasks which the artisans of prior ages were slave to.

Reply to
Swingman

Interesting quote from Wright. Though I never thought of Wright as trying to go mass market he clearly understood what the technology could do. I'd think today's wonder machine, i.e., the one that brings variety to the masses, would be the CNC machines. With CNC the masses can afford fancy looking stuff like Chippendale, Queen Anne, etc...

John

Reply to
John Grossbohlin

1901 is pretty early for Wright, before the Larkin Building and Unity Temple. He was just developing the Prairie Style and mainly building private homes.
Reply to
Andrew Williams

However he was always looking for a way to go mass market--that was the main point of his "Usonian Automatic" designs in the '50s, something that could be built with little skilled labor--people have built them by starting out with a mold and making one concrete block at a time until they had enough to build the house.

Reply to
J. Clarke

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