Feel the human hand at HANCOCK SHAKER VILLAGE

The western Massachusetts area known as the Berkshires is home to dozens of summer music festivals, art museums, and trendy restaurants.

- David Heim

It’s also where you’ll find Hancock Shaker Village, a carefully curated living museum that offers an in-depth look at how the Shakers lived, worked, and worshiped (see sidebar, p. 33). Anyone who loves finely crafted furniture, beautiful cabinets, and graceful oval boxes will enjoy a day here.

Don’t expect to see actors recreating activities from a century and a half in the past. The Shakers themselves left in 1959 and sold the property to an organization that turned it into a museum. Docents in the main buildings answer visitors’ questions and give brief informative talks about the Shakers’ daily routines, philosophy, and worship.

There’s plenty to see at Hancock Village, including thousands of objects ranging from small oval boxes to 20-ft.-long communal dining tables. Rooms are set up as they would have been in the 1800s, largely uncluttered Chair detective. The ladderback chair with a woven-tape seat is one of the most recognizable pieces of Shaker furniture. Here, Jeff Brace, a former timber-framer who has been with Hancock Shaker Village since 2008, explains how subtle differences in the finials and back splats identify the community that made the chair. but with explanatory labels and placards. Workrooms are arranged as the Shakers used them for weaving, broom-making, woodworking, and other endeavors. In the Laundry and Machine Shop building, for example, one room houses two lathes, two planers, a scroll saw, a table saw, and a massive bandsaw. Most are belt-driven and powered by a 3.5-hp water turbine in the bowels of the building. Chuck Wales, the interpreter in this room, is a retired mechanical engineer who has been explaining the machinery since the museum opened more than 50 years ago.