Shaker Made

Carol Peachee's Shaker Made provides an important glimpse into the material culture of one of America's most influential utopian societies. Rather than a simple 'inventory' of objects, Peachee's powerful black-and-white photos evoke the 'spirit of the maker.' The people behind the objects—their faith, their labor, their lives—become just as important as the objects themselves.

~Billy Rankin, vice president of Public Programming & Marketing, Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill

Carol Peachee captures Pleasant Hill objects and architecture in a most creative and effective way. The exceptional legacy of Shaker craftsmanship in Kentucky has been well documented in her work over the past thirty years, and University Press of Kentucky preserves it well in this volume.

~Tommy Hines, executive director of South Union Shaker Village

The silence and stillness in this precisely documented material life of a Kentucky Shaker community is stunning as it ranges from landscape to jumbles of wooden wall pegs and carefully wrought metal keys. Insightful comments by the collections curator and the photographer introduce the black-and-white images, which, in a quiet and meditative way, invite the viewer and the visitor to marvel at the vibrancy that once enlivened this enduring repository of faith and radical belief.

~Jane F. Crosthwaite, author of Shaker Visions of the Divine: Essays on Their Sacred Art and Scripture

The Shakers' understanding of the millennium undergirded the belief that their communities were 'heaven on earth' and that faithful industry could be reflected in material objects. Shaker landscapes, past and present, are vibrant tapestries manifesting Shaker spirituality and conviction. Carol Peachee's gorgeous images of Kentucky's Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill capture the reified beauty of the Shakers' lives of sacred devotion.

~Carol Medlicott and Christian Goodwillie, authors of This Chosen Pleasant Hill: Shakers of the Kentucky Bluegrass