To commemorate my recent conversion to Quakerism, I've made this Poser model of a typical 18th or 19th century Quaker meetinghouse interior of the type found in the middle-Atlantic area of the US. Although this is also included in the readme, i will post here a brief description of Quakerism, for the curious: Quakers, properly called the "Religious Society of Friends", were founded in 1652 by George Fox, upon discovering a phenomenon which he termed the "Inner Light", whic is the central focus of Quakerism. The name "Quaker" was originally used as a derogatory word, derived from George Fox's statement that he "trembled at the Word of God". The Friends almost immediately adopted the word as an informa name for themselves. Quaker practice includes a belief in absolute equality, thus a Quaker refuses to use honorific titles such as "your Honour", "your majesty", "my lord". etc. At one time Quakers even refused to use "sir" or ma'am" but this has been abandoned in recent times as those titles indicate simple politeness and not superiority of rank. Another characteristic of Quakers is our practice of "plain speech". In English, at one time this included using the pronoun "Thee" instead of "You", but this practice was discontinued in the early to mid 20th century. Quakers speaking languages other than English use the familiar forms rather than the Formal address (for example, a French-speaking Quaker will always address people as "tu", and never "vous"). Today there are 4 main types of Quaker: Orthodox, Evangelical, Conservative and Liberal. These vary according to beliefs, although none has a formal creed and quakers of all four types usually share a meetinghouse. The word "Meeting", besides referrign to the worship meetings themselves, also refers to the congregation. Each congregation, referred to as a "monthly meeting" (even tho they usually hold meeting weekly) is a memebr of a sort of diocese called a Quarterly Meeting, and each of those is in turn a memebr of a sort of archdiocese caleld a "yearly Meeting' - for example, my meeting, the York, PA monthly Meeting, is a memebr of the Warrington PA Quarterly Meeting and the Baltimore Yearly Meeting. Individual Quakers are referred to as Friends(capital F), and during meetings they address one another as 'Friend' Traditionally, Quakers practice what is referred to as unprogrammed "silent worship". There is no order of worship. The meeting begins when the first memebr arrives and sits down. The "facing bench" at the front is occupied usually by the oldest memebrs,referred to as "weighty Friends". The memebers sit silently, waiting for the prompting of the Inner Light, and every once every once in a while, someone will speak briefly, as they feel moved by the Inner Light. If someone speaks too long, one of the Weighty Friends will politely ask him to quickly end his message. In extreme cases, memebrs will stand up in protest of the long, rambling message, althouhg I personally have never seen this happen. after about an hour or so, one designated memebr, usually the oldest, ends the meeting by shaking hands with the person next to him/her. The memebrs then shake hands with the peopel around them, and the Meeting ends.