Tack in the box

Nothing is more quintessentially Shaker than the bentwood pantry box. Boxes were made at almost all of the communities for their own use and were made for sale at about 1/2 dozen of them. They were often made by elders in the community. They typically ranged in size from under 3" to 15" long. The largest know Shaker box is 23" long. They were made by bending steamed or soaked wood around a wooden form and then tacking the overlapping parts together with tacks made of iron or copper. The overlapping portions were either cut into "swallowtail" fingers (as pictured) or straight up and down (as pictured in example on our Collections pages). These boxes were used to store a variety of items in both the Kitchen (grains, flours, sugar, baking powder, herbs and spices) and the Workshop (screws, nails, string, buttons, sewing notions, etc.). It has been rumored that Shakers at Mount Lebanon alone made over 100,000 boxes. Please visit a couple of them on our Collections page.