Handy Folding Ladder is a minimal ladder created by RISD-graduated designer Christopher Specce. The Shakers equated order, cleanliness, and neatness with the divine, and the chores required to achieve those ideals had the capacity for worship. Communal life and the specialization of labor enabled the Shakers to design and produce objects that were uncommon in their specificity of purpose and quality of manufacture. The designer was drawn to the devotional craft the Shakers invested in the things they made and their ritualization of the tasks of daily life. He tried to create a similar, albeit somewhat absurd elevation of the mundane, juxtaposing those spiritual aspirations with the kind of souvenir interpretation that exists in a gift-shop’s-view of this rich and idiosyncratic culture. Modeled on archetypical plastic garden rakes, windshield ice-scrapers, folding step ladders, and Procter & Gamble’s Swiffer, the simple tools he created are intended to provide familiar utility while allowing for both more mindful and ridiculous use.