The items have historic significance to the Sabbathday Lake Shakers and the former Alfred community where they were used.

A red kilo dairy tub used by Sister Aurelia Mace has her name etched on the bottom, and experts verified Sister Deborah Fuller’s Native American basket.

“It’s important that this comes back home. It’s in the context of where it was used and back in connection with the people that produced it,” said Michael Graham, director of the Shaker Museum and Library. “This is part of our identity, cultural heritage and has to be preserved,” he said.

The woodenware glistens with original milk paint in tones of blue, green and mustard in three firkins and the red kilo tub. Other treasures include a Native American-made basket and sections of a spinning wheel and tinware originated in the Alfred and New Gloucester communities in the early and late 1800s.

The Boston Museum of Fine Art’s board of directors voted to return 14 items to the United Society of Shakers as a gift, Graham said.

“We weren’t known to the Museum of Fine Arts,” Graham said. “The chief curator of the Shelburne Museum in Vermont advocated for us to the Museum of Fine Arts to donate the items as a gift to bring them home to the Sabbathday Lake Shakers.

“We were notified before Thanksgiving by the board of the Museum of Fine Arts of the gift,” Graham said.

Before then, Museum of Fine Arts had sent other pieces of furniture went to auction in New Hampshire. These pieces were authenticated as originating in Maine’s Shaker communities in Alfred and New Gloucester.

“We were fortunate that we were given a heads-up that Maine’s originating Shaker furniture was being sold by the Museum of Fine Arts,” said Graham, who added the Shakers succeded in getting the items and bringing them home.

“All museums have a policy for their collections. Museums can’t keep everything. There are limits to space and money. We were fortunate,” Graham said.

The auctioned items are at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village and include a Shaker sewing desk, a yarn winder, a child’s chair and two blanket boxes.

Brother Arnold Hadd, one of three remaining Shakers at the Sabbathday Lake community, said, “I think this is a significant gift. We have a unique situation. These pieces came directly from the community and were cared for by a specific family, then donated to another Museum and their generosity of spirit to bring it back to where it belongs is most appreciated. We can’t thank them enough for their generosity.”

When the Alfred Shaker community closed in 1931, members moved to reside at Sabbathday Lake along with 40 truckloads of their Shaker possessions.

Hadd said a roadside antique shop in the 1783 Shaker Meeting House offered the community a significant source of income from the 1930s until the 1960s.

The Sabbathday Lake Shakers settled in New Gloucester in the late 1700s and are the last active community in America from the many that existed throughout the country.

Sabbathday Lake remains home to three members who live in the midst of a seasonally operated museum, library and herb business that offer the public a variety of educational programs, including the Festival of American Music.