Author: Shaker Village

Jacob A. Glover, PhD, Director of Public Programs and Education

“…The brethren started into the woods, about 3 ½ miles off, to cut timber for this [Meeting] House, the 3^rd of January, 1820 and pronounced it done, the last of next October, which was 10 months in building, lacking 2 days.”

– Pleasant Hill Ministry to New Lebanon Ministry, March 1821

Here at Pleasant Hill we are accustomed to milestones and celebrations, but there’s something extra special in the air this October as we celebrate the 200^th birthday of our beloved Meeting House! Both the physical and spiritual center of Pleasant Hill, the 1820 Meeting House has remained a marvel of Shaker architecture and an inspirational place of community-building since its completion.

As the passage that opens this post reveals, the Pleasant Hill Shakers constructed the 1820 Meeting House in a fairly short amount of time. From gathering materials and resources in January to worshipping in the space by November – it was quite the feat! Digging into this timeline a bit deeper, we can uncover some fascinating tidbits about the Pleasant Hill community, and the wider Shaker world, during this time.

First, we should note that this was the second Meeting House the Shakers built at Pleasant Hill. The first Meeting House was a stone building that stood just to the south of the Old Ministry’s Shop in what is now an open patch of lawn. Damaged by earthquakes in 1811 and 1812, by 1820 further use of this smaller space for worship was untenable.

In any case, Pleasant Hill had also decided to reorient the center of their community to where the Centre Family Dwelling and 1820 Meeting House now stand. The frenzied 10-month build, therefore, was much more than mere physical labor – it quite literally transformed how Pleasant Hill conceptualized and understood their community for the rest of its existence.

In relation to the wider Shaker world, the 1820 Meeting House at Pleasant Hill was one of four meeting houses built by western Shaker communities around this time that all shared similar characteristics and dimensions. At Union Village in Ohio, the Shakers constructed an almost identical 44’ x 60’ building in 1818 in which the second floor and roof were supported by a bridge truss in the attic. In 1819, the South Union Shakers built their meeting house, and White Water (another Ohio village) completed their similar building in 1827.

The similarities in construction and use reveal how connected the different Shaker communities were, and that ideas and information were shared amongst all for the betterment of each community. The unique history of each of these buildings in the intervening years, however, provides perspective and an appreciation for everything that has been done to preserve and protect the 1820 Meeting House at Pleasant Hill over the last 200 years.

As we move through October we will return to the Meeting House in several blog posts and begin to uncover some of these stories of community use, transformation, preservation, and inspiration that have transpired inside this amazing structure!

Laura Webb, Program Specialist

Hello again, folks! We’re now halfway through our NEH grant timeline. I’m approaching the home stretch of object editing, and will soon begin photographing select items. In the meantime, let’s chat about artifact conservation!

In going through object entries in PastPerfect, I have also been checking our maintenance and conservation notes entered into the system from past conservator reports. Early on in this project, one word in these notes caught my eye: “saliva.” At first, I thought this must be some sort of typo. Then, after finding several more examples, I wondered if it was a faithful documentation of a (surely!) outdated practice. After all, artifact conservation techniques have certainly changed a lot over history. Out of insatiable curiosity, I dug a little deeper.

I found out that cleaning artifacts with human saliva—known colloquially as a “spit shine,” and scientifically (albeit euphemistically) as “enzymatic cleaning”[1]—is a conservation technique that has been used for centuries.[2] However, it also (surprisingly enough) has scientific backing! A 1990 Portuguese study confirmed that the amylase enzyme contained in human saliva makes it, for many delicate surfaces, a more effective cleaning agent than water, while still being gentle enough to use on sensitive materials.[3] The authors won the 2018 chemistry “Ig Nobel” prize for unusual achievements in scientific research for their study.[4] It has also been investigated for use on silver gelatin photographic prints—although with mixed results, and further study needed.[5]

As y’all might imagine, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused this practice to be put on hold in some institutions, while others are putting it under closer scrutiny and modifying their procedures to increase sanitation.[6] Synthetic solutions that imitate saliva have also been tested, and appear to be just as effective, but of course are more expensive than…well, than fluids humans naturally produce anyway.

Regardless of what future studies determine, we can understand how important it is to document all past conservation treatments on an artifact! Have you ever seen old glue turn yellow on something? Yep, that’s not what we want. Our standards, knowledge, and available materials change over time, and sometimes it is necessary to undo past work for the longevity of an object.

While past conservators at Pleasant Hill have used this technique, I could not find a record of it being used since the mid-1990s, and none of these items are currently on display—so you don’t need to worry about our current exhibits! In general, though, perhaps…don’t lick the artifacts.

Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill was awarded a CARES grant through The National Endowment for the Humanities in June 2020. Funding from this grant award supported two activities to enhance digital humanities initiatives at SVPH, including Laura Webb’s work to review our collection records and prepare them for publishing in a public digital database.

[1] Allison Rosenthal, “Spit Cleaning: Conservation’s Dirty Little Secret” (Buffalo Bill Center of the West, July 9, 2015), accessed September 18, 2020, https://centerofthewest.org/2015/07/06/spit-cleaning-conservations-dirty-little-secret/.

[2] Steven Litt, “Little-Known Art-Cleaning Technique Nothing to Spit At,” The Seattle Times (The Seattle Times Company, April 7, 2002), accessed September 18, 2020, https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=20020407.

[3] Paula M. S. Romão, Adília M. Alarcão, and César A. N. Viana, “Human Saliva as a Cleaning Agent for Dirty Surfaces,” Studies in Conservation 35, no. 3 (August 1990): pp. 153-155, accessed September 18, 2020, https://doi.org/10.2307/1506167.

[4] Emma Stoye, “Art Conservation Using Saliva Wins Chemistry Ig Nobel,” Chemistry World, September 14, 2018, accessed September 18, 2020, https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/art-conservation-using-saliva-wins-chemistry-ig-nobel/3009504.article.

[5] Ruth Oliver, “May I Spit on Your Photograph? A Preliminary Investigation into the Effectiveness of Saliva and a Synthetic Alternative for Surface Cleaning Silver Gelatin Photographs,” in 4th Book, Paper & Photographs Symposium, 2006, pp. 174-193.

[6] Luke Wong, “Coronavirus Puts Damper on Saliva Cleaning Method in Art Galleries and Museums,” ABC News (ABC Central West, June 27, 2020), accessed September 18, 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-28/saliva-spit-cleaning-art-gallery-museum-conservator-pandemic/12398824.

Laura Webb, Program Specialist

Hello again! Welcome to the second installment of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant blog series.

Even before I last checked in with you, I had been diving deep into our object records to make progress on phase one of this project.

Pop quiz time!

Q. What does phase one entail, again?

A. If you read last week’s blog you may remember phase one includes, “Sift[ing] through existing digital records with an editorial eye, checking for consistency, accuracy and potential missing information.”

Here’s a breakdown of my progress so far. I’ve edited 940 objects in a little over seven days of work. I’m no math whiz, but my calculator tells me that I’m averaging roughly 120 object records per day. That’s six online catalog “pages” of 20 records each. With 4,624 object entries currently digitized (not including records for photographs, archival documents and research library publications), that means I’m roughly one-fifth of the way through phase one of this project. If all goes well (knock on wood), I’m projected to complete this phase in early September. Thank you, calculator!

I’m going through our records with specialty museum software called PastPerfect. This software has had lots of updates and features added since it first came out in 1998, but honestly it has a user interface that still looks like it survived Y2K.

It may not look sleek, but it’s very thorough! I’m a detail-oriented person, so we get along fine. And this is certainly a meticulous job – some might say tedious, even. So far, even maintaining my “productivity averages,” I’ve done many passes over the same records several times a week, developing consistent syntax and record-keeping, along with teaching myself software tools, tricks and shortcuts as I go.

With this “close looking,” I’ve run across items deep in our collection that even I didn’t know we owned, which you can expect to see examples of in later posts in this series.

I’ve also caught lots of oddball errors. For example, one past software update moved object information into a field called “Species,” referring to Natural History. This meant I’d see objects called “Species: Stove” and the like. Other times I’ve found amusing typos, such as one referring to Shaker Pure Extract of Malt as “Pure Extract of Meat,” which sounds awfully unappetizing!

As I’ve been making my passes through our collection records, I’ve also noticed trends in accessioned (which means “to record in the order of acquisition”) ^[i] objects. As we add items in batches, often as they are donated or purchased, I get a sense of that collector’s interests. There will be waves of rugs, bottles, baskets, or chairs all at once. It’s fun to speculate about the previous owner’s personality and to notice subtle differences between otherwise similar items.

While our digital catalog’s final form will, of course, keep our donor’s personal information private, soon you too will be able to investigate the depth and breadth of our collections.

Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill was awarded a CARES grant through The National Endowment for the Humanities in June 2020. Funding from this grant award supported two activities to enhance digital humanities initiatives at SVPH, including Laura Webb’s work to review our collection records and prepare them for publishing in a public digital database.

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[i] The Free Dictionary by Farlex, s.v. “accession,” accessed July 23, 2020, https://www.thefreedictionary.com/accessioned.