One thing we get asked over and over again is – what is a Shaker Kitchen?
The Shaker kitchen is defined by a particular design of door and drawer fronts, usually made up of a 5 piece unit featuring a recessed centre panel – with little to no ornamentation.
This well-loved kitchen style can be traced back to an 18th-century religious sect, the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing – commonly known as the Shakers due to their enthusiastic movement and dancing during worship.
The Shaker community was largely self-sufficient with honesty; utility, and hard work at the heart it. Their humble and simplistic nature led them to believe that every object in the home should have a function and that any form of ornamentation was prideful and extremely deceitful.
They became highly skilled in construction, producing high-quality furniture and household items from local, sustainable sources with little timber waste – values we strongly identify with here at Jamie Knight Handmade Kitchens.
Our Director and Founder, Jamie says, ‘we pretty much make everything by hand and in the most practical way, similar to the way it used to be. Every door, cabinet and finished item is designed and produced in house to our customer’s specifications’.
Traditionally Shaker Furniture is made from cherry, maple or pine lumber, and generally stained or painted in a particular colour (historically determined by the sect). However, the evolution of this style has meant that you can now expect to find the Shaker kitchen in a range of colours.
In fact, here at Jamie Knight, we can make your Shaker Kitchen completely unique by painting your cabinets in an unlimited range of colours at our in-house spray shop.
This versatile kitchen style is ordered and uncluttered with plenty of storage solutions, making it one of the most enduring and popular kitchen styles to date.
Whether you have a traditional country home, a modern townhouse, or a minimalist apartment – the Shaker Kitchen can be adapted to create a functional living and workspace for any size or type of household.
We recently built this Shaker-inspired kitchen for customers, Nigel and Jo. Like the traditional Shaker kitchen, the beauty is found, not in the ornamentation, but in the hand-made high-quality cabinetry.
Solid oak drawer boxes were expertly crafted with neat dovetail joints and company branding.
And the kitchen was handpainted in our in-house spray shop in Strong White and the island in Cornforth White.
The team also created this personalised carving on a mixed prime oak frontal with painted shaker drawers bringing a touch of modernity to the otherwise classic kitchen.
