Utopian Benches consists of twenty-four examples of furniture that Francis Cape has reconstructed using available examples and measured drawings. The focus of the project is on benches that were designed for 19th-century American utopian communities with a craft tradition, most famously the Shakers, but also the Amana Inspirationists, the Zoar Separatists, and the Rappites. Cape’s intention for this work is for the benches, as shared seating, to represent community and, as examples of craftsmanship, to propose a reconsideration of value. The project also aspires to address the legacy of resistance to capitalist-driven individualism that formed the founding ideals of American groups once referred to as “communisms” and “socialisms”.  As such, it advocates ways in which an increasingly outmoded category of furniture, the bench, might be instrumental in exploring the importance of community and collective ownership. As part of its effort to examine the local as a site of opposition to the global, the first exhibition of the work will feature benches from intentional communities within the immediate region of Arcadia University (ten miles north of Philadelphia). These range from the Ephrata Cloister (founded in 1732), through the Rose Valley Arts and Crafts Community (founded in 1901), to the contemporary, such as Camphill Village Kimberton (founded in 1972). Sources for the benches are not limited to this region, however, as the craft-focused societies of the Shaker and Amana in America, and the followers of William Morris in the Guild of Handicrafts in the UK, are too central to the project to omit. Constructed from poplar grown near Cape’s studio in Narrowsburg, New York, the benches will be arranged to form a sculptural installation at each exhibition venue, facing each other as opposed to a dais or altar. With the exception of a list of communities represented (and possibly drawings of some of the benches that were not built), the walls of each given space will be purposely left bare to facilitate the transformation of the room into a site of meeting, discussion, and social idealism. Integral to this transformation will be the programming of meetings open to the general public at each venue. Following a format established by the Quakers, Cape suggests that each of these proposed gatherings be focused around a different topic pertinent to the project moderated by a leading proponent in the given field. Possible subjects include "utopia", "the local", "community", and “the value of things.” Traveling this set of new sculptures represents a compelling development in the evolution of Cape’s practice, which for many years has been identified with a rigorous form of site-specificity in which the dimensions of his constructed objects were derived from their presentational contexts and often built directly into them. Apprenticed to a wood carver in England before becoming a sculptor, Cape has made craftsmanship and the history of architectural and furniture design central to his work. His last project focused on the British 1940s Utility Furniture Scheme, a successor to the Arts and Crafts movement there. It was his subsequent research into the American Arts and Crafts and the history of social idealism that led to this project.