John makes these shaker boxes the traditional way, painstakingly handcrafting them from various woods. After cutting the thin wood strips for the sides and carving the 3-pronged edge, John steams the strips, hand-bends them around wooden shaping molds (which he also made) and fastens them on the sides with copper tacks. He uses wooden pegs to attach the sides to the tops and bottoms. Absolutely NO kits are used in making these boxes.

The name of the boxes comes from the Shakers, a religious communal sect that followed a doctrine of celibacy, and so relied on outside recruiting to maintain their numbers. the sect virtually disappeared after the Civil War, and today there are just a handful living in Sabbathday Lake, Maine.

The Shakers began making oval boxes (they also made round and rectangular boxes) in the United States for sale and for their own use in the 1790's. The boxes were made in a wide range of sizes for household and workshop use. They were used to store dried herbs, spices, thread, buttons, nails, medicines - just about anything except liquids.

Shaker Elder Delmer Wilson (1873 - 1961) of Sabbathday Lake was the last member of the sect to make the oval boxes.