San Francisco International Airport – Inspired Design: Shaker Furniture from the Benjamin Rose Collection

New exhibition features iconic examples of Shaker furnishings from one of the preeminent private collections of Shaker furniture and crafts in the United States.

SAN FRANCISCO, 2013-02-20 — /travelprnews.com/ — The most successful of all American communal sects, the Shakers first established societies in New York and New England in the last two decades of the 1700s.  Members strove to create a divine society—a heaven on earth.  Every task they undertook whether large or small was conducted with piety, as the community’s founder, Mother Ann Lee once instructed: “Put your hands to work and your hearts to God.”  The Shakers valued honesty, simplicity, utility, and fine craftsmanship.  Their furniture eliminated unnecessary ornament, instead, emphasizing clean lines and purity of form.  These qualities were thoughtfully embodied in the furniture and handicrafts they produced from the late 1700s to the early 1900s.  From tables and chairs to wooden boxes and baskets, each individual item was constructed with care.

Benjamin Rose first began collecting Shaker furniture in the mid-1960s.  His extensive collection includes a broad range of artifacts from the classic period of Shaker design (1820s–1860s).  Inspired Design: Shaker Furniture from the Benjamin Rose Collection features Shaker furnishings from the communities of Canterbury, New Hampshire; Hancock and Harvard, Massachusetts; Mount Lebanon and Watervliet, New York; Sabbathday Lake, Maine; and Enfield, Connecticut.

Selected images from the exhibition are available for download at: http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/sfo_museum/about/press_images/exh-shaker.html

Inspired Design: Shaker Furniture from the Benjamin Rose Collection is located pre-security in the International Terminal Main Hall Departures Lobby, San Francisco International Airport. The exhibition is on view to all Airport visitors from February 16, 2013 to August 11 2013.  There is no charge to view the exhibition.

SFO Museum
Museum was established by the Airport Commission in 1980 for the purposes of humanizing the Airport environment, providing visibility for the unique cultural life of San Francisco, and providing educational services for the traveling public.  The Museum was granted initial accreditation from the American Association of Museums in 1999, reaccredited in 2005, and has the distinction of being the only accredited museum in an airport.  Today, SFO Museum features approximately twenty galleries throughout the Airport terminals displaying a rotating schedule of art, history, science, and cultural exhibitions, as well as the San Francisco Airport Commission Aviation Library and Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum, a permanent collection dedicated to the history of commercial aviation.   For more information, please visit www.flysfo.com/museum.

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