When he first made Northern Ireland his home, more than 20 years ago, the English design historian David Brett chanced to remark that he considered himself an atheist. "I was then asked, with what seemed to be a straight face, whether I was a Protestant atheist or a Catholic atheist," he says. "The question, which anywhere else in the United Kingdom might seem bizarre, struck me at once as very interesting, because I recognised myself as belonging to the first category. I positively and firmly disbelieved in what I intuited was a very Protestant style." The aesthetic Brett has in mind is a form of puritan minimalism with its origins in the 17th century. Introduced by British and Dutch settlers to North America, and meeting with no alternative, it quickly became the characteristic aesthetic. This transatlantic plainness, often referred to as the "colonial style", reached its height in the architecture and design of Shaker communities.
