Before embarking upon a professional writing career, Shea collaborated with Paul Wenger in 1934 introducing woodworker's manuals on colonial furniture styles to a receptive, growing crowd of amateur woodworkers. This book, in particular, describes furniture with a cultural slant, especially as it focuses on America's colonial period. Shea was merely tapping into a movement sweeping the American nation at the time, a movement called the Colonial Revival. A great historical perspective of home woodworking interest in the '30s.