Stove, Heating
Stove, Church Family, Canterbury, NH
Notes
The Shakers believed this stove to be one of the earliest stoves that they made and used, dating from the early 1800s. A photograph album prepared by Bertha Lindsay, eldress at the Canterbury community, includes a snapshot of this stove with a caption saying that it "was one type of many, made by the early pioneers" and that the stove "could be used as an open grate or as a closed stove." Typical of Franklin-style stoves invented 50 years before, the body of the stove is cast in a single piece, with separate castings for the platform of the base and the legs. The door is formed of sheet iron reinforced with wrought iron straps and mounted on hand forged hinges. The stove works like a fireplace with the advantage that the door can be closed to more precisely control the amount of air that fuels the fire and to make it safer to use when left unattended.
Robert F.W. Meader, Illustrated Guide to Shaker Furniture (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1972), p. 104. Marian Klamkin, Hands to Work: Shaker Folk Art and Industries (New York: Dodd. Mead & Company, 1972), p. 194.
New Hampshire Canterbury Church Family
