Broomin’ Marvellous! – All about Shaker brooms
- Emily Treece
- Jan 22
- 3 min read
Shaker-style brooms are the first products we at Hearth & Soul started selling. It wasn’t really a conscious decision as such, just something that kind of took on a life of its own. The idea always was to grow and make things from the forest garden. I’d tried a number of different crafts, pine needle basketry, beeswax and honey products etc. It was whilst I was researching willow basketry that I happened upon various tutorials on traditional American shaker-style brooms. These aren’t widely known in the UK and I was instantly captured by their beauty and thought I had to have a go at making my own! I shared a few photos of brooms I’d made on social media when soon enough people started asking me if I sold them and Hearth & Soul was born. But what is a Shaker broom? What is it made of? What makes it different? And how is it made? Read on to find out!
What are Shaker brooms?
People have tied bunches of leaves and twigs together to sweep away dust and dirt for millennia. The traditional broom that would come to mind for most in the UK is the round headed “besom” made with coppiced birch twigs (or sometimes heather or the broom plant the name of which later replaced the term “besom”). This was the style used for hundreds of years until a revolution in broom making took place in the USA.
Shaker-style brooms are named after the Shakers, a Christian sect who valued quality craftsmanship and beautiful yet simple and functional design. In 1798, a Shaker named Theodore Bates invented the “broom vice”. Using the vice, Bates discovered he could flatten the bristles of brooms and sew them to maintain that flattened shape for more efficient sweeping, covering a larger surface area than a traditional round broom.
What are Shaker brooms made of?
The reason that this revolution in broom making was possible at all was thanks to a man by the name of Levi Dickinson of Masachusetts who discovered in 1797 that the Sorghum vulgare plant (broomcorn), traditionally grown as animal fodder, produces tassels which make stiff yet flexible bristles with hair-like follicles to trap dust and dirt particles. It’s like the microfibre cloth of the pre-industrial age!
The bristles are also fairly straight, thin, pliable and uniform, meaning they can be packed more tightly together than previously used materials such as birch, heather and broom, thereby reducing gaps in the broom head. So, this new material combined with the new technology of the broom vice allowed much more efficient brooms to be made.
Shaker brooms come in different shapes and sizes
You’ll notice from our products page that not all of our Shaker-style brooms look the same. This is because, various binding techniques were developed to provide the same efficient sweeping shape in smaller “handbrooms”. Popular examples are turkey wing (or hen’s wing brooms) and hawk’s tail brooms, so named for their shape.
How are brooms made?
Flatbrooms and cobwebbers
Waxed thread is wound around a wooden dowel or foot brake which is controlled by the feet to provide tension as sections of broomcorn are woven onto a wooden handle. The head of the broom is then clamped and stitched to hold the bristles in the correct shape.
Handbrooms
As with the larger brooms a wooden dowel is used to control the tension of the thread as sections of broomcorn are added. Handles can be embellished buy weaving patterns into the broomcorn stalks.
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