December 2009 – Southern Maine, Part II

Our Saturday stop was the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Museum. It’s still a Shaker site with three remaining Shakers who farm, pack herbs, sell “fancies” like pincushions and hold Shaker services. There was an exhibit, “The Human and the Eternal: Shaker Art in Its Many Forms,” featuring Shaker-made drawings, boxes, pincushions, hooked rugs, needlework, carved birds, furniture, paintings and even photographs. Many of the items were unlike anything “Shaker” I had ever seen—and I grew up on land that was once a Shaker farm.

A visit to any of the Shaker museums is worthwhile if you have any interest in their work ethic, products and unusual religious beliefs.

The next morning we hurried through the Maine Native American Summer Market and Demonstration on the Shaker grounds. The museum invited 15 modern Indian artists to sell their crafts, including baskets, birch-bark art, stone sculpture, jewelry and wood carving. High prices, exceptional crafts.

If you go to this area of Maine, also visit Poland Spring Preservation Park. It’s where the Poland Spring water sold in grocery stores today got its start. In 1845 Hiram Ricker began selling bottles of water from a natural spring in the area. The old building has been restored, but the new bottling plant, which turns out thousands of bottles of spring water daily, is about 30 miles away. It’s now owned by Nestlé.

The color exhibit catalog is for sale at the museum’s gift shop ($30 postage-paid, 69 pages, 119 images, check or money order to: United Society of Shakers, 707 Shaker Road, New Gloucester, ME 04260).

to be continued…