Kentucky’s Shaker
villages, South Union and Pleasant Hill, drew converts from the South. Those
converts brought their own well-established manners, customs, and cultural
biases into a system that had been designed by Shakers rooted in the Northeast.
South Union, in particular, had a difficult time adapting and, consequently,
created a material culture and maintained a folklife that was unique among
Shaker villages. From the food they ate to the furniture they produced, from
the way they spoke to the way they constructed buildings, the Kentucky Shakers were
set apart from their northern counterparts. Their story is colorful, humorous,
heartbreaking, and fascinating.
Tommy Hines is a graduate of Western Kentucky University
with an undergraduate degree in Music Theory and Folk Studies, and a Master of
Arts degree in Historic Preservation and has spent his career as Executive
Director of South Union Shaker Village. He has presented on topics related to
Southern decorative arts at venues that include Frist Center for the Arts,
Colonial Williamsburg, the Decorative Arts Trust, and for the Museum of Early
Southern Decorative Arts. Hines has also
authored three award-winning exhibit catalogs, published articles in Antique Review and The Magazine Antiques, and contributed to other publications,
including Kentucky by Design: The
Decorative Arts and American Culture (2015) and Making Time: The Art of the Kentucky Tall Case Clock, 1790-1850 (2019). Hines received the Ida Lee Willis
Service to Preservation Award from the Kentucky Heritage Council (2001), the Edith
Bingham Excellence in Preservation Education Award from Preservation Kentucky
(2018), and the Frank R. Levstik Award for Professional Service from the
Kentucky Historical Society (2020).