![Making Shaker brooms](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Making_Shaker_brooms.jpg)
The Shaker broom vise is a specialized production
vise
A vise or vice (British English) is a mechanical apparatus used to secure an object to allow work to be performed on it. Vises have two parallel jaws, one fixed and the other movable, threaded in and out by a screw and lever.
A vise grip is no ...
that made the normally round
broom
A broom (also known in some forms as a broomstick) is a cleaning tool consisting of usually stiff fibers (often made of materials such as plastic, hair, or corn husks) attached to, and roughly parallel to, a cylindrical handle, the broomstick. I ...
flat to make it more efficient for cleaning purposes. The
Shakers
The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers, are a Millenarianism, millenarian Restorationism, restorationist Christianity, Christian sect founded in England and then organized in the Unit ...
' invention revolutionized the production and form of brooms; in the process greatly expanding an industry in
New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
.
Background
Shaker brooms built upon the 1797 contribution of
Levi Dickenson of
Hadley, Massachusetts
Hadley (, ) is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 5,325 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The area around the Hampshire and Mountain Farms Ma ...
who used tassels of
sorghum
''Sorghum'' () is a genus of about 25 species of flowering plants in the grass family (Poaceae). Some of these species are grown as cereals for human consumption and some in pastures for animals. One species is grown for grain, while many othe ...
(Sorghum vulgare), known as
broom corn
''Sorghum bicolor'', commonly called sorghum () and also known as great millet, broomcorn, guinea corn, durra, imphee, jowar, or milo, is a grass species cultivated for its grain, which is used for food for humans, animal feed, and ethanol produc ...
, to make a better grade of broom. Brooms were essential to
kitchen
A kitchen is a room or part of a room used for cooking and food preparation in a dwelling or in a commercial establishment. A modern middle-class residential kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, a sink with hot and cold running water, a ...
and
hearth
A hearth () is the place in a home where a fire is or was traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking, usually constituted by at least a horizontal hearthstone and often enclosed to varying degrees by any combination of reredos (a lo ...
cleanliness. The manufacture and selling of brooms was the most widespread of all the Shaker industries. The first sorghum brooms were made by the
Shakers at Watervliet. This colony is credited with being the first to grow broom corn, which was around 1800 when they first grew it on an island in the
Mohawk River
The Mohawk River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed October 3, 2011 river in the U.S. state of New York. It is the largest tributary of the Hudson River. The Mohawk f ...
that was near their community.
Invention
Theodore Bates (1762–1846) of the Watervliet Shaker community is credited with the innovation of the "flat broom" in 1798, as all brooms and brushes prior were round. He invented a unique wooden vise that pressed the round bristles flat. This allowed heavy twine to be sewn through the flattened broom to permanently hold that shape.
Bates' vise idea to make flat brooms and brushes was a leap in technology since it produced products that worked much more efficiently. An industry developed to sell these to the outside world. Soon the
New Lebanon community ramped up to make these flat brooms. This flattening technology worked well with their woodworking technology of lathe-turned wood handles. The vise was used as part of the Shaker broom making process.
Most of the Shaker villages were involved in making these flat brooms and flat brushes. The flat brooms were produced by the tens of thousands. Only a few of the original Shaker flat brooms made in the nineteenth century have survived into the twenty-first century. These were made under the auspices of a
Mount Lebanon Shaker Trustee named Robert Valentine (1822–1910).
The Shakers were the pioneering inventors of the broom vise, which made today's flat broom possible. According to this was "the only major update to the broom since the introduction of the broom machine" and permitted flattening and sewing, instead of mere lashing to a round handle. This design innovation is evidenced in modern brooms (assuming they are not synthetic).
The brooms were respected and given care – such as hanging on the wall when not in use and sometimes covered with cotton hoods to keep them clean. The covered flat brooms were used to dry-polish hard wood floors and clean the last traces of dust off hard surfaces.
The flat broom led to a boom of broom making in the United States. In 1850, more than a million brooms were built in Massachusetts alone, resulting in a large export trade extending to South America.
Description
The vise consists of two upright planks, one rigidly fixed to the base and the other hinged via a pair of short distance pieces. This can be clearly seen in the small vise on the left of the illustration "Making Shaker brooms". The handle of the broom can pass between the distance pieces, the length of the handle imposing a minimum size on the fixed upright. Larger vises may have the movable jaw hinged at the base and do away with the distance pieces, see the illustration "Shaker broom vises".
Illustrations on show that there are two sets of jaws affixed to the planks. The lower set are level with the top of the planks and are circular when closed to firmly grip the head of the broom. Metal plates rising from the planks carry the upper set which are flat and force the broom corn flat. The jaws are closed by a toggle mechanism operating on horizontal links from the fixed jaw and vertical hanger links from the floor. The toggle is provided with a long wooden handle which the operator can pull down to secure the broom in the vise.
Gallery
File:Several Shaker brooms.jpg, Several Shaker brooms just made
File:Shaker brooms sowed.jpg, Flat brooms stitched to hold form
File:Shaker broom vice operating.jpg, Shaker broom vise working operation
File:Shaker broom vices.jpg, Shaker broom vises in shop
File:Broom Vise.jpg, Broom Vise; Enfield Shaker Village, New Hampshire; In the collection at Enfield Shaker Museum
The Enfield Shaker Museum is an outdoor history museum and historic district in Enfield, New Hampshire in the United States. It is dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of the Shakers, a Protestant religious denomination, who lived o ...
.
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
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External links
{{Commons category, Shaker brooms
Cleaning tools
Domestic implements
Shaker inventions
18th-century inventions