The Journey of Bushky Bushybottom


Book Description

Follow the adventures of Bushky Bushybottom, a young squirrel who is blown from his treehouse and carried far away by a wild, wild wind. In his search for home is is both helped and hindered by many different characters. But a twist of fate bring Bushky home in a most unexpected way.




The Shaker Communities of Kentucky


Book Description

The Shaker Communities of Kentucky: Pleasant Hill and South Union presents the lives, struggles, and achievements of a remarkable people. The chronicle spans Shaker beginnings in England and relocation to America, the Great Awakening in America followed by the Kentucky Revival, Shaker beginnings in Kentucky, and the establishment of the South Union and Pleasant Hill Shaker villages. The Shaker central ministry sent missionaries to Kentucky from New York in 1805 after hearing about the Kentucky Revival, which culminated with the Cane Ridge Revival of 1801. Their efforts resulted in the establishment of villages in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. Pleasant Hill and South Union were among the most successful and enduring of all the Shaker villages. This volume provides a striking visual portrayal of Shaker life by means of rare vintage images, including beliefs and worship, relationships with other believers and the world, and their highly regarded workmanship. Gradual decline resulted in the closing of both villages, but restorations have turned both sites into popular destinations. The Shaker Communities of Kentucky: Pleasant Hill and South Union presents the lives, struggles, and achievements of a remarkable people. The chronicle spans Shaker beginnings in England and relocation to America, the Great Awakening in America followed by the Kentucky Revival, Shaker beginnings in Kentucky, and the establishment of the South Union and Pleasant Hill Shaker villages. The Shaker central ministry sent missionaries to Kentucky from New York in 1805 after hearing about the Kentucky Revival, which culminated with the Cane Ridge Revival of 1801. Their efforts resulted in the establishment of villages in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. Pleasant Hill and South Union were among the most successful and enduring of all the Shaker villages. This volume provides a striking visual portrayal of Shaker life by means of rare vintage images, including beliefs and worship, relationships with other believers and the world, and their highly regarded workmanship. Gradual decline resulted in the closing of both villages, but restorations have turned both sites into popular destinations.




Shaker Ghost Stories from Pleasant Hill, Kentucky


Book Description

A collection of true experiences from Shakertown, Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, from those who have claimed to have sensed, seen, or heard former inhabitants of Pleasant Hill.




Letters from a Young Shaker


Book Description

In the early nineteenth century, a young man belonging to the prominent Byrd family of Virginia, the grandson of William Byrd III, took up residence in the Shaker community at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. Over the next two years, 1826–1828, he wrote a series of letters to his father, a federal judge in Ohio, describing his experiences and his impressions of the United Society of Believers, as the Shakers were formally called. Eventually, William S. Byrd became a convert to the society and an advocate of its beliefs and practices. His letters—cut short by his father's death—offer today's reader an intimate view of communal life among the Shakers at a time of considerable turmoil in their village. In the correspondence of William S. Byrd, the Shaker experience is expressed in human terms and becomes a living faith. The letters also record the trials associated with conversion to a religion that was socially unacceptable to many Americans of the time. Some of their more poignant passages describe young Byrd's attempt to reconcile the tensions created by his membership in two families—the one of blood and the one of faith. Letters from a Young Shaker provides an unusually instructive commentary on life in a Shaker community, on the questions agitating the community, and on the appeal of Shakerism to Americans in the early nineteenth century. In addition to the letters, the book contains other documents bearing on William Byrd's relationship with the settlement at Pleasant Hill and an introduction placing him in the social and religious context of the period. This book will appeal to historian of American society and to anyone interested in the Shaker way of life.




Utopia Drive


Book Description

For Erik Reece, life, at last, was good: he was newly married, gainfully employed, living in a creekside cabin in his beloved Kentucky woods. It sounded, as he describes it, "like a country song with a happy ending." And yet he was still haunted by a sense that the world--or, more specifically, his country--could be better. He couldn't ignore his conviction that, in fact, the good ol' USA was in the midst of great social, environmental, and political crises--that for the first time in our history, we were being swept into a future that had no future. Where did we--here, in the land of Jeffersonian optimism and better tomorrows--go wrong? Rather than despair, Reece turned to those who had dared to imagine radically different futures for America. What followed was a giant road trip and research adventure through the sites of America's utopian communities, both historical and contemporary, known and unknown, successful and catastrophic. What he uncovered was not just a series of lost histories and broken visionaries but also a continuing and vital but hidden idealistic tradition in American intellectual history. Utopia Drive is an important and definitive reconstruction of that tradition. It is also, perhaps, a new framework to help us find a genuinely sustainable way forward. " ... an engaging exploration -- and example -- of the fruitful tunnel-visions of dreamers turned doers." - Publishers Weekly




The Shaker Furniture Handbook


Book Description

This book surveys furniture made during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Shaker communities of New England, Kentucky, and Ohio, with over 130 color photos. Free-standing tables, chairs, boxes, desks, built-in cupboards, and cases of drawers are included. The text introduces nearly twenty Shaker communities, known cabinetmakers, identifiable furniture traits, and designs unique to specific Shaker communites.




Shaker Design


Book Description

"The Shaker movement in America began in 1774 when Mother Ann Lee emigrated from Manchester, England, with a small group of followers, and settled in New York State. Despite impoverished beginnings, the Shakers flourished in the early nineteenth century, and by 1840 there were four to six thousand members living in eighteen principle communities from Maine to Kentucky. Turning away from society, they lived in large families that were both celibate and communal. In striving for heaven on earth, they created a visual environment of such harmony and quiet power that it continues to impress observers today, when the Shakers have all but passed from the American scene. The many works presented in this beautiful volume reveal the Shaker commitment to excellence in all matters. The chairs, cases of drawers, work stands, baskets, oval boxes, wheelbarrows, stoves, looms, and even tailoring tools have a purity of form that transcends mere utility and elevates our appreciation beyond a sense of function."--Amazon.




Shaker Built


Book Description

The team that introduced Shaker life, work, and design to America and the world, in such successful books as Shaker and Shaker Design, here presents the ultimate visual work on the unique melding of form and function that created the Shaker look. 200 color illustrations.




Into the Bluegrass


Book Description

Signature Edition, slip cased, leather bound 250 limited edition.Into the Bluegrass - Art and Artistry of Kentucky's Historic Icons displays author Dr. Mel Hankla's gifts as a teacher of history and skilled storyteller. Dr. Hankla shares his deep knowledge of frontier Kentucky and his great reverence for her early peoples, offering his readers the best possible outcome: interesting stories told by someone who loves his subject. From Kentucky's earliest frontier weapons to the artistry found in 19th-century furniture, silver, textiles, pottery, and pictorial art, the objects are iconic and the story is Kentucky's own.




Shaker


Book Description

Although only a handful of the Brothers and Sisters of America's unique Shaker community are left, the Shaker legacy lives on in the architecture, furniture, crafts and inventions they created. This text discusses the origins and beliefs, the work and daily life of these people.




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