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Xerox University Microfilms 3C0 North Z eeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. MASTERS THESIS M-7565 McINTYRE, William John CHAIRS AND CHAIRMAKING IN UPPER CANADA. University of Delaware (Winterthur Program), M.A., 1975 History, modern
Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor. Michigan 4S106
© 1975
WILLIAM JOHN McINTYRE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chairs and Chairmaking in Upper Canada
by
W. John McIntyre
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Early American Culture.
June, 1975
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAIRS AND CHAIRMAKING IN UPPER CANADA
BY
W. John McIntyre
Approved "ssor in charge of thesiiProfessor thesis on behalf of the Advisory Committee
Approved VU4M €.* Coord/lator of the Winterthur Program
Approved 2d ~ - ~ Dean of the College of Graduate Studies
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Preface
Scholarly interest in American decorative arts is a relative
newcomer to the academic scene. Beginning late in the nineteenth century,
the United States began to lead the way to a better understanding of the
arts and crafts of the New World. In Canada, research in this field has
been in progress for an even shorter period of time and is in large part
the by-product of an emerging sense of Canadian nationalism which itself
is a mere decade or two old.
This study of chairs and chairmaking in Upper Canada was under
taken in order to add to our knowledge of the decorative a rts of North
America. As will be apparent in the chapters which follow, the political
boundary between Upper Canada and the United States was not an impregnable
barrier separating two schools or traditions of craftsmanship. The people
of both sides of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes shared a common
cultural heritage. They moved back and forth across the border and they
traded with one another. Only by considering the economic, cultural and
social development of both these areas does the picture of Upper Canadian
chairs and chairmaking begin to come clear.
The groundwork for this study was laid, in large part, by Jeanne
Minhinnickss At Home in Upper Canada (Toronto and Vancouver: Clarke Irwin,
1970), and by Philip Shackleton’s The Furniture of Old Ontario (Toronto:
The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited, 1973). As with a ll good f i r s t
i i i
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iv
generation research, these books raised more questions than they answered
and now inspire others to explore in detail specific aspects of the Upper
Canadian craft tradition.
In preparing this study, a wide variety of primary sources, including
newspapers, directories, assessment records, customs records, correspondence
and account books has been used. These m aterials date from the 1790fs to
the 1870's. Since large numbers of documents relating to individual c ra fts
men, periods or areas have yet to be found, it has been possible only to
sketch in outline the activities of Upper Canadian chairmakers between these
two dates. Emphasis has been placed on discovering th e ir identity, the
types of chairs they produced, where and how they worked, the competition
they faced and the beginnings of factory production.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgments
Many people have contributed to the preparation of this thesis.
F irst among them i 3 my adviser, Dr. Kenneth L. Ames of the Henry
Francis duPont Winterthur Museum. His good humor and sound advice are
much appreciated.
Special thanks go to Donald Blake Webster, Curator, Canadians
Department, Royal Ontario Museum, for suggesting the topic of this study
and for his p ractical assistance in providing film , darkroom work and funds
for travel.
Others helped too and responded willingly to cries for help at
various stages along the way. Listed alphabetically, they were: Mr. John
Andre, Registrar, Black Creek Pioneer Village, Toronto; Mr. R. Kenneth
Armstrong, former Director, Centennial Museum, Peterborough; Mrs. Kenneth
Ashby, Port Hope; Miss Margery D isette, Curator of Furnishings, Upper
Canada Village, Morrisburg; Mr. Elmer C. Dynes, Shelburne; Mrs. D. J .
Frisken, former Curator, Centennial Museum, Peterborough; Mrs. Clyde E.
Helfter, Curator of Iconography, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society,
Buffalo; Mr. John N. Hoffman, Smithsonian Institution, Washington; Hope K.
Holdcamper, C ivil Archives Division, National Archives and Records Service,
Washington; James Hunter, Toronto H istorical Board; Mrs. Elizabeth Ingolfsrud,
Ontario Furniture Consultant, National Museum of Man, Ottawa; Mrs. Bruce
Lewis, Registrar, York Pioneer and Historical Society, Toronto; Mr. John W.
Lunau, Curator, Markham D istrict Historical Museum; Miss Margaret S. Machell,
v
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Custodian of The Grange, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Mr. and Mrs.
Donald C. McClure, Aurora; Kenneth H. MacFarland, Librarian, Albany
In s titu te of History and Art; Mrs. Margaret MacKelvie, Curator, Century
Village, Lang; Mr. W. J. Patterson, Superintendent of Historic Sites, The
S t. Lawrence Parks Commission, Morrisburg; Mr. Werk Poole, General Manager
The Gibbard Furniture Shops Limited, Napanee; The Rochester H istorical
Society; Mr. Ralph Schenk, Curator, Doon Pioneer Village, Doon; Mr. John L
Scherer, Associate Curator, History, The University of the State of New
York, The State Education Department; Mr. Paul G. Sifton, Manuscript
Division, Library of Congress, Washington; Mr. M. W. Thomas, Jr., Chief
Curator, New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown; and Mr.
William D. Wallace, Director, Oswego County Historical Society.
Thanks are extended also to the sta ff of the Henry Francis duPont
Winterthur Museum Libraries, the Eleutherian Mills Historical Library, the
Detroit Public Library, the Rochester Public Library, the Toronto Central
Reference Library, the Public Archives of Ontario and the Public Archives
of Canada.
The names of those individuals and institutions who graciously
allowed me to photograph items in their collections are included with the .
illustrations.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Contents Page
Preface
Acknowledgments v
Introduction viii
Chapters
I . Some Early C'nairmakers and Centers of Production 1
II. The Business of Making, Finishing, and 18 Selling Chairs
III. Trade in Chairs and Chair Parts 37
IV. Factory Production Begins 60
V. Contacts With the United States and Other Aspects of Chairmaking in the 18£0>s and •60»s 86
Illustrations 95
Bibliography 178
v ii
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Introduction
Chairmaking, combining the traditional skills of the joiner,
turner, carver and upholsterer, was recognized in England as a distinct
occupation by the second h alf of the seventeenth century, 1 I f by th is
time English craft divisions were not as rigid as they had been, in America
they were even less so. By the nineteenth centuiy, the formal separation
of woodworking trades had broken down still further. Yet chairmaking still
required special knowledge, s k ills and tools and those who made chairs
faced problems of marketing and competition often quite different from
those known by other woodworkers.
The story of chairmaking in Upper Canada began officially with the
creation of the province by the Constitutional Act of 1791. Before the
1780' s , the part of the North American continent bounded by the Ottawa
River on the e ast, the S t. Lawrence River and Lakes Ontario and Erie on the
south and Lake Michigan on the west, was known only to Indians and a few
French fur traders and m issionaries. In 1760, France ceded her colony of
Quebec, of which these lands were a p art, to the B ritish . The B ritish had
no immediate plans for colonization of the interior region of the continent
until the Revolutionary War made necessary the opening up of these lands as
a haven for Loyalist refugees. In time, other settlers followed the
Loyalists, among them craftsmen and farmers with no strong political 2 persuasion but anxious to make a fresh start.
v iii
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ■As a p o litic a l en tity , Upper Canada ceased to exist in 18U1 when
i t was renamed Canada West. Yet the old name holds on even today and in
this study of chairs and chairmaking it has been used freely to describe
the southern part of what now is called the Province of Ontario. Ontario
came into being with Confederation in 1867.
In organizing this study, it seemed natural to tie in aspects of
social, economic and cu ltu ral histroy which are necessary to an under
standing of Upper Canadian chairmaking within the body of the text rather
than in a lengthy introduction. Thus, starting with these few bits of
background information, we begin our study of chairs and chairmaking in
Upper Canada.
1. John Gloag, A Social History of Furniture Design (New York, 1966), p. 18.
2. Standard works on Upper Canadian history are Gerald M. Craig, Upper Canada The Formative Years (Toronto, 1963) and J. M. S. Careless, The Union of the Canadas (Toronto, 1967).
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER I
Some Early Chairmakers and Centers of Production
The first chairmaker to advertise his wares in the new province
was Daniel Tiers of York. On January 23, 1802, the Upper Canada Gazette;
o r, American Oracle, the colony's only newspaper, announced,
The Subscriber returns his sincere thanks to his Friends and the Public for the great encouragement he has hitherto met with, and begs leave to inform them, that he now intends carrying on his business in all branches without delay — armed chairs, Sittees, and dining ditto, fan-back and brace- back chairs. He very shortly expects a quantity of different paints; it will then be in his power to finish his Chairs in the best manner, and by his great attention to perform his promises, hopes to merit protection and support.
DANIEL TIERS York, Jan 23, 1802
N.B. He also expects a quantity of common Chairs from below, which he w ill dispose of on reasonable terms.
The notice appeared again in the next two weekly issues.
From Mr. T iers's allusion to "the great encouragement he has
hitherto met with," i t would seem that he had opened his chairmaking
business sometime before January, 1802 — but just how long before is
impossible to say. Evidently he intended to decorate his chairs with
paint he had ordered for the purpose and, to round out his stock, looked
forward to the arrival of a quantity of chairs "from below." In the year
1802, and for many years thereafter, "below" was used by Upper Canadians 2 to refer to Lower Canada, now the Province of Quebec. Thus Mr. T iers's
advertisement provides a very early indication of importation of chairs
1
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. from outside the colony. The fact th at he had ordered only "common
chairs" — ladderbacks, perhaps — is significant. Either Tiers felt
it was more economical to import this type of chair from Quebec than
to make it himself or he was unable to keep up with the demand of his
market.
Little else is known about this first recorded chairmaker in
Upper Canada. His reference to "fan-back and brace-back chairs," two
d istin c tly American Windsor types, would suggest that he had learned
his trade in the United States. In fact, Daniel Tiers may well be the
Pennsylvanian, Daniel Tierce, who is recorded as having been located
in "the German settlement laying East in the Ries of Yonge Street" by
Count William von Moll Berczy sometime before the third of January,
1798.^ The association is suggested, but not confirmed, by the fact
that in 1803, when Daniel Tiers is known to have been living in York,
Tierce is recorded as having left the Berczy settlementJ4
After his arrival in the capital, Tiers does not seem to have
remained a chairmaker for very long. By May, 1811, he had turned to
the operation of a general store,'’
Not until 1823 does another chairmaker advertise in York. This
does not mean that no chairs were made in the town during the interval.
But York in the early nineteenth century, despite its prominence in the
political affairs of the colony, lacked many of the amenities usually
associated with a capital city. From the time of its first settlement,
in 1793, until well into the nineteenth century, it was known by the
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. unflattering epithet of "Muddy Little York."^ In 1813, a major setback
occurred when its government and public buildings were burned to the
ground by an invading American force. The town recovered, but even by 7 the year 1826 its population numbered no more than 167? inhabitants.
While documentary evidence is lacking, common sense dictates that
most of the furniture used by the lower and middle classes of York, and
elsewhere in the colony at this time, would have been produced by local
craftsmen. An advertisement by one Alexander Legge in The York Gazette
of 1811 strengthens this supposition by reason of its long list of
furniture makers' tools and supplies. Mr. Legge offered for sale,
among other items in his shop,
T ill, Cupboard, Brass Desk, and Brass Pad-locks, Ring and Thumb Latches, Compasses and Iron Squares, Wood Bed-castors, Brass Drawer handles, Slide Rules, Screws and brass socket Castors, Joiners Squares, Chest hinges, brass do, Clock Case Trimmings, Commode Knobs and Bed-caps, Drawer Locks in sets, Cast and German Steel Hana-saws, Sash, Key-hole and tenant saws, Gouges and Mortice Chissels, Screw Augurs and Drawing-knives, Braces and Bits, g Bench and Moulding Plains.
In I8l5» when furniture was required for the Barracks in York, an
advertisement was placed in the Gazette for 150 chairs.9 Local chair-
makers must have been expected to apply for the contract, although th eir
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. u
names and the chairs they produced have now been lo st.
Eight years la te r, the second chairmaki::g shop to advertise in
York had opened its doors "on the West Side of the Market Square, next
door to Mr. Hamilton’s Inn." Chester Hatch and Company, a firm which
also operated in Kingston, were the propietors and pledged to keep "a
constant supply of a ll kinds of FANCY, BAMBOO, and WINDSOR CHAIRS; Also
FANCY and WINDSOR SETTEES." In addition to making chairs, Hatch and
Company executed "all sorts of Sign and Fancy Painting. . .with Neatness
and Dispatch." For th eir services, they, like most other Upper Canadian
retailers at the time, accepted country produce in lieu of cash.^
In 1828, another chairmaking shop opened on the west side of
Market Square, the shop of B. W. Smith and Judah Monis Lawrence.
Lawrence had earlier been in business, perhaps as a chairmaker, in
Newmarket, about twenty-five miles north of York. There he had been
in partnership with one Joseph H ill u n til December, 1809. ^ Lawrence
seems to have maintained his association with the district north of the
capital; for in their first advertisement, Smith and Lawrence drew
attention to their "Ware-Room. . . where Chairs may be had at all times"
on Yonge Street, near present-day Aurora. The types of chairs available
there, and in the Toronto shop, were of the fancy, "bamboo," and Windsor 12 variety.'*' By 1833, Lawrence had again struck out on his own and had
begun a chair factory on Lot Street E a s t.^ Three years la te r, he had
abandoned the chairmaking business and had become the propietor of the
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5
York Hotel on King S t r e e t .^
The names of Richard French and Horace Wiman also appear as
chairmakers during th is period. Like Judah Monis Lawrence, French and
Wiman are noted in an 183U directory as operating a "chair factory."
Their factory was situated on the east corner of Bay and King S treet,^
in the heart of town, but does not seem to have lasted very long. By
1837, Richard French was operating it him self,^ now in competition with 17 the firm of Wiman and Chanley, just a few doors away. Nine years later, 10 in 18U6, French had moved to a different location on King Street, while
the firm of Wiman and Chanley had left off business in the city altogether.
The growth in numbers of chairmakers in York and the first appea
rance of what the directories term "chair factories" coincide with the
growth of the community from a frontier town to a small city with a popu
lation by 183U of about 8,000 inhabitants. As if to symbolize the change,
the town of York became the incorporated City of Toronto in I 83U. There
after, population and the demand for locally produced furniture grew apace.
In 18U2, statistics reported 15,336 people in the city. Eight years later, 19 the figures had jumped to more than 25,000. During this time, William
Johnson, George Heatherington, John Butters, George Phipps, March and
Church, Thomas Fuller and Company, John Harley and William Rolph opened
their chair shops in the city along with several score of cabinetmakers,
joiners and upholsterers. The greatest of them all were John Jacques
and William Hay who, after having carried on their business in the 1830's 20 in premises belonging to Richard French, by 185U were operating their
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6
own chair- and cabinetmaking factory and employing upwards of one hundred 21 people. Yet, as we shall see, much of this activity was supplemented by
a large amount of imports from the United S tates.
In the early years of the nineteenth century, the town of Kingston
was York's most serious rival. As early as 1792, the town contained fifty
houses, most of them the property of Loyalists who had begun to settle in 22 the area immediately a fte r the American Revolution. In 1817, the popu
lation of Kingston had risen to 225>0, considerably more than that of York.
In the end, however, Kingston was bound to be overshadowed. York, with
its better harbor and richer hinterland, took the lead as the province's
chief trading and manufacturing center. After a moment of glory, when the
seat of government of the united C-anadas moved to Kingston in 18U1, the
city fell further and further behind. In 1850, its population numbered
just a little more than 10, 000. ^
Prominent among early Kingston chairmakers was the young,enter
prising Chester Hatch. In 181$ Hatch came to Kingston from the United
States and, a t the age of 19, opened his shop "near the Sign of the Fiddle."
Some six months later, Hatch moved to a new location at "the Sign of the
White B e a r." ^ There, in 1817, Hatch offered for sale, in addition to
fancy, Windsor, "bamboo" and "Commen" chairs, "Elegant Broad top ball back"
chairs which bring to mind the stylish painted chairs of the eastern
United States ( illu s . 17). Also advertised were "Waterloo" chairs,
"Waterloo" being a term used after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 to refer
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. to the sabre leg of chairs of the fashionable Greek klismos form. 26 Then
too there were children's chairs available at Hatch's shop, a type -which,
before the era of mechanized production, only the w ealthier classes could
afford. Kingston, which in 1817 dominated the commercial, i f not the p o li
tical, life of the colony and which contained within its populace numerous
merchants, military men and half-pay officers, provided a generally
wealthier and more sophisticated market than did the rival town of York.
I t is interesting to recall that when Hatch and Company opened th e ir shop
in the capital city in 1823, they offered their clients there chairs of
the fancy, "bamboo" and Windsor types alone.
The third early area of settlement in Upper Canada was located at
the mouth of the Niagara River, where, in 1792, Lieutenant-Governor John
Graves Simcoe met his first legislature at the newly-constructed Navy Hall.
While the Upper Canada Gazette; o r, American Oracle began publication here
before i t followed the government to York in 1798, no advertisement of a
Niagara chairmaker or retailer before the year 1828 has been located. It
was then that Robert Fields drew attention to his "chair warehouse" at
Niagara, now Niagara-on-the-Lake. 27
At the same time, Joseph Poucett advertised his "chair factory,"
where "Plain and Ornamental painting, gilding and glazing" and "Imitations
of all kinds" were done. Six years later, in 183U, Poucett had given up
his chairmaking and painting business and had gone to work for a lady with
the exotic name of Rafaela Gabiott. Mrs. Gabiott, one of a very few
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8
Canadian businesswomen a t the time, had purchased the chair factory of
one Patrick Stedman who had "for some time back" conducted his business 29 in Niagara. Poucett was employed to superintend the enterprise.
The existence in the Niagara area of advertisements for "chair
factories” as early as the 182 0 ’s may indicate that large-scale production
of chairs was begun here sometime before its introduction in other parts
of the colony. Until some facts and figures about the extent and size of
these so-called "factories" come- to light, however, no firm conclusions
can be drawn: the term "factory” was used rather loosely in the nineteenth
century and often referred simply to a place where something was made.
Apart from the settlements a t York, Kingston and Niagara, other
communities along the St. Lawrence or near Lake Ontario also achieved some
measure of importance in the f i r s t h alf of the nineteenth century.
Cornwall, Prescott, Brockville, Gananoque, B ellev ille, Trenton, Cobourg,
Port Hope, Hamilton and a host of other towns all had at least one resi
dent chairmaker from the l820’s or'30’s onward. Often, however, our only
knowledge of his presence comes from an advertisement in a local newspaper.
In other parts of the province as well settlement progressed at a
steady pace. As early as 1796, Yonge S treet had been pushed north of York
almost to Lake Simcoe. Up the newly-cleared tr a il walked land-hungry
se ttle rs from New York, Quakers, Mennonites and Lutherans from Pennsylvania,
and even a small group of French Royalist emigres who had fled the
Revolution to seek th eir fortune in the new land. From 1801 onward, a
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 9
steady stream of Conestoga wagons made its way from central Pennsylvania
to the rich farmlands of Waterloo County, while along the north shore of
Lake Erie, Colonel Thomas Talbot busied himself with what became the young
colony’s most ambitious scheme of settlem ent.
Prior to the War of 1812-lU, most of the population of Upper Canada
was American in origin. After l 8l£ , however, adverse economic conditions
following the Napoleonic Wars brought more and more English settlers to
the young colony. Then, in the l830's and'&O's, the flood gates opened and
in rushed a new generation of immigrants from Germany and Alsace and, more
especially, from famine-struck Ireland and Scotland.
Many of the newly-arrived German immigrants settled in Waterloo
County, where Pennsylvanians of German ancestry had settled before them.
Among them was Jacob Hailer who had been born in Wilferdingen, Grand Duchy
of Baden, in 180U and who arrived in Berlin, now Kitchener, in 1832. The
year a fte r his a rriv a l, H ailer purchased an acre of land from Mennonite
Bishop Benjamin Eby, opened a shop and began to manufacture chairs and
spinning wheels — a logical combination since both items required similar
skills of turning and joinery. Hailer continued his business for some
forty years, during which time he was active in civic and religious affairs
and instrumental in establishing in the province a branch of the German
Evangelical Association. 30
Hailer, whose shop near the corner of King and Scott Streets is
reputed to have contained two foot-powered lathes, has been described as
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "an expert wood turner.Yet surviving examples of his work would
indicate that Hailer made only relatively simple rush-seated chairs of
the ladder- and slat-back type which, while competently executed, show
no particular virtuosity of turning.32 Nor do they show any evidence of
their maker's German origins, but are virtually identical to other contem
porary chairs across the province. In fact, very few chairs showing dis
tinctly German features have yet come to light in Ontario. This is despite
the fact that at least three other German chairmakers were working in the
Berlin area at the same period. Friedrich Guggisberg, announcing in l 8lUi
by way of Per Deutsche Canadier that "Er von seiner Reise nach Deutschland
wieder zuruck gekommen ist" drew the public’s attention to his "Stuhlen, 33 von alien Sorten," but failed to be more specific about his wares. John
Hoffman, who doubled as a cabinetmaker, was a bit more precise in his adver
tisements and noted his selection of "Schaukel Sttthle" (rocking chairs) and
"Windsor Stuhlen," chairs with English and American, rather than German,
antecedents.-^ The third, Roa Ziegler, advertised simply "Stuhlen" and
"Schaukelsttihle von alien Sorten." ^
While a number of wardrobes and dressers of German- or Pennsylvania-
German-influenced design survive today in public and private collections
throughout the province, i t has sometimes been claimed that the best of
these Ontario pieces long ago were removed from their place of origin and
sold in the United States with a Pennsylvania attribution attached. The
apparently complete lack of German- or Pennsylvania-German-influenced chairs
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11
in present-day Ontario cannot, however, be explained away simply by
reference to the unscrupulous whims of antique dealers. Only research
into the origins, shop practices and markets of Waterloo County craftsmen
may turn up the answer.
Supplementing the production of the professional chairmaker in
Upper Canada were those farmers and mechanics whose s k ills in woodworking
enabled them to make small quantities of simple furniture for their own or
their family's use. As late as 1855, Catherine Parr Traill wrote in her
Canadian Settler1s Guide,
The shanty, or small log-house of the poorer emigrant, is often entirely furnished by his own hand3. A rude bedstead, formed of cedar poles, a coarse linen bag filled with hay or dried moss, and bolster of the same, is the bed he lie s on; his seats are benches, nailed together; a table of deal boards, a few stools, a few shelves for the crockery and tinware; these are often all that the poor emigrant can call,his own in the way of furniture. L ittle enough and rude enough.-'0
Hoping to soften the ordeal of backwoods housewifery a 3 much as
possible, Mrs. Traill wrote in her cheery, common-sense way,
If your husband or elder sons are at all skilled in the use of tools, they can make out of common pine boards the frame work or /sic/ couches or sofas, which look when covered and stuffed, as well as that the cabinet-maker will charge seve r a l pounds fo r. A common box or two staffed so as to form a cushion on the top, and finished with a flounce of chintz w ill f i l l the recess of the windows.''*
Chairs made from common flour barrels also were described by Mrs. Traill:
A delightful easy-chair can be made out of a very rough material nothing better than a common flour-barrel. I will, as well as I can, direct you how these barrel-chairs are made. The f i r s t four or five staves of a good, sound, clean flour barrel are to be sawn off, level, within two feet of the ground,
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 12
or higher, if you think that will be too low for the seat; this is for the front: leave the two staves on either side a few inches higher for the elbows; the staves that remain are left to form the hollow back: augur holes are next made all round, on a level with the seat, in all the staves; through these holes ropes are passed and interlaced, so as to form a secure seat: a bit of thin board may then be nailed, flat, on the rough edge of the elbow staves, and a coarse covering, of linen or sacking, tacked on over the back and arms; this is stuffed with cotton-wool, soft hay, or sheep's wool, and then a chintz cover over the whole, and well-filled cushion for the seat, completes the chair. Two or three of such seats in a sitting room, give it an air of great comfort at a small cost.-50
Mrs. T ra ill probably derived her instructions for making chairs from a
sim ilar account, accompanied by wood engravings, which appeared in A. J.
Downing's The Architecture of Country Houses some five years before The 39 Canadian S e ttle r 's Guide was published.
While there ore- no known examples of b arrel chairs extant in
Ontario today, many are the "chairs which great-grandfather made." Some,
such as those shown in illustrations 2 and 3, may well be rare survivals
of homemade furniture. Yet a great many others are clearly the product of
a chairmaker's shop, and only by reason of long family ownership and the
sometimes hazy recollections of a younger generation have their true origins
been obscured.
Two of the most interesting and unique chairs ever associated with
the name of an amateur are in the collection of the Centennial Museum in
Peterborough (illus. 8 , 9, 10, and 11). Both are made of. maple. The larg er
of the two boasts arm terminals carved in the manner of animal masks and
front legs ending in boldly carved paw feet. The smaller chair, with its
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. simpler, scrolled arms and term-shaped front legs, is more restrained in
overall appearance, yet breaks out on top into a frenzy of jagged points.
Still another note of virtuosity is struck by the fact that the upholstered
backs of both chairs are entirely removable. With the backs gone, two
elaborately cut slats are revealed. On^their own, these slats form the
very attractive crest rails of two, now open-backed, armchairs. While
certain details — the animal masks and the paw feet, for instance — may
be associated with Regency or Empire fashions, these chairs are unique both
in construction and design and are clearly the work of a talented amateur
craftsman. The maker associated with them is Thomas W. Colleton (1798-185#),
a retired military officer who is said to have produced them, using a razor
for the carving, at Vernonville, Peterborough County, around the year 181#.^°
Probably a common phenomenon in the country districts of the province
was the existence of the semi-professional chairmaker, the craftsman who
ran his farm during the summer months and spent his winter hours in the
workshop. Such a man was Henry Walrath of Richmond Township, Lennox and
Addington County. According to family tradition, Walrath, a woodworker
from McKeesport, Pennsylvania, emigrated to Canada about the year l8h2.
While attempting to gather enough money to pay the requisite duties on his
tools and woodworking machinery, a fire broke out in the custom house sheds
and destroyed his equipment. Without enough capital to start afresh,
Walrath turned to farming, acquiring land near the village of Roblin,
where his descendants still reside. On a corner of the farm, he set up
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ik
a small log workshop for which he eventually was able to purchase a lathe
and some turning tools. There, when work on the farm was not too demanding,
he produced simple ladder- and arrowback chairs (illus. 12 and 1 3 ) which
were sold from a wagon to small retail establishments in the area. For the
ladderbacks, he fashioned woven seats of slippery elm gathered from swampy
land nearby.^
The a c tiv itie s of the ru ra l chairmaker, such as Henry Walrath, and
the talented amateur, such as Thomas W. Colleton, are far more difficult to
document than are those of their urban counterparts. Without newspaper
advertisements, directories and detailed census or assessment records,
research into this aspect of Ontario chairmaking relies heavily on oral
and family history complete with all the pitfalls which such sources present.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Footnotes
1. Upper Canada Gazette; o r, American Oracle, Jan. 23, 1802,
•2. An 1830 advertisement for C. H. Jones and Company's Staffordshire Warehouse in York makes clear the meaning of "below" in early Upper Canada. Noting that 2£0 packages of china, earthenware and glass have arrived "below" and are being forwarded to York, the advertise ment goes on to state, "The Goods are of the best description and choicest patterns, imported direct from the Manufactories in England by themselves, which they w ill be able to dispose of for cash or approved Bills, at the Montreal prices. -Thus saving those who may favor them with th e ir custom in th is Province, a ll risque, freig h t and conveyance, betwixt th is and Lower Canada" (Upper Canada Gazette Nov. 25, 1830).
3. Berczy Papers, 1798, Public Archives of Ontario (cited hereafter as PAO); Berczy Narrative, II, II48 , Toronto Central Reference Library (cited hereafter as TCRL).
li. Domesday Book, IV, 223, Patent O ffice, Department of Lands and Forest Ottawa.
$. The York Gazette, June 1, 1811.
6 . W. H. Smith, Canada Past, Present and Future, 2 vols. (Toronto, 18S>2) I I , 3.
7. Ibid., II, U.
Y°r k Gazette, Aug. 17, 1811.
9. The York Gazette, Dec, 9, 1815.
10. Upper Canada Gazette, Aug. 21, 1823.
1 1 . The York Gazette, Dec. / Y'f, 1 8 0 9.
12. The L oyalist, Sept. 13, 1828.
13. York Commercial Directory, S treet Guide and Register, 1833 -h, ed. George ’Walton (York, 183117, p. 38.
lU. The City of Toronto and the Home D istrict Commercial Directory and R egister, ed. George Walton (Toronto, 1837), p. 26.
15
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission 16
15. York Commercial D irectory, p. 2.
1 6 .'The City of Toronto and the Home D istric t Commercial D irectory, p . 17.
17. Ibid., p. $0.
18. Brown' s Toronto City and Home D is tric t Directory l81i6-7, ed, George Brown (Toronto, 1$5S), p. 267
19. W. H. Smith, op. cit., II, h.
20. Toronto Assessment Records, St. George's Ward, 1837, Toronto City Hall.
21. William Chambers, Things As They Are in America (London and Edinburgh, 185U), p. 115. 22. Gerald M. Craig, Upper Canada The Formative Years (Toronto, I960), p. 26.
23. W. H. Smith, op. cit., II, 276
2li. Joan MacKinnon, Kingston Cabinetmakers Before 1867, TS, Canadians -Department, Royal Ontario Museum.
25. Kingston Gazette, Nov. 11, 1817.
26. See John Gloag, A Short Dictionary of Furniture (New York, 1965), p. UOli.
27. Niagara Herald, Sept. 11, 1828.
28. Ib id .
2 9. Niagara Gleaner, Nov. 1. 183b.
30. W. H. Breithaupt, "President's Address," First Annual Report of the Waterloo Historical Society (Berlin, Ont., 1913"), p. lUT
31. Jacob Stroh, "Reminiscences of Berlin (NowKitchener)," Eighteenth Annual Report of the Waterloo Historical Society (Waterloo, 1930), p. 195. 32. See Mrs. E. S. Sargeant and Mrs. John Goldie, "Waterloo Pioneers' Furniture," Nineteenth Annual Report of the Waterloo H istorical Society (Kitchener, 1933), illus. opposite p. 26U.
33* Per Deutsche Canadier, Nov. 7, l 8hh.
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3li. Per Deutsche Canadier, April 12, l81ih.
35* Deutsche Canadier, Jan. 6, 1850.
36. Catherine Parr Traill, The Canadian Settler 1s Guide (l855; rp t. Toronto, 1969), p. 21.
37. Ibid., pp. 18-19.
38. Ibid., p. 21.
39. See A. J . Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses (New York, 1850), pp. Ul3-ItlU.
iiO. Accessions file, Centennial Museum, Peterborough, Ont.
Ul. For th is information I am indebted to Mrs. George Brooks of R. R. 3 Roblin, Ontario, a great-graridaughter of Henry Walrath.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER I I
The Business of Making, Finishing and Selling Chairs
Few records survive to t e l l of the day-to-day work of the Upper
Canadian chairmaker. Like other craftsmen of his time, the chairmaker
was not a scribbler or a man of letters. He seems to have lived his life
quietly, pursuing his craft as skillfully and as profitably as he knew how
and thought not at all how future generations might come to dissect and
analyse his lif e and work. To date, not a single example of a chairmaker's
account book or other records has come to light.
As for the tools of the chairmaker's trade, the chairs speak for
themselves. The sim plest examples ( illu s . 2 and 3) required only the use
of a saw or sp littin g to o l, a hammer and ch isel, and a draw knife. By
sawing or splitting unseasoned wood, the chairmaker could obtain the
essential parts of his chair. With the hammer and chisel, he could make
the necessary holes and slots so that the pieces could be fitted together.
With the draw knife, he could smooth and shape the legs, posts and spindles.
By using a mixture of green and seasoned parts, the chairmaker could avoid
the use of glue, nails and screws entirely. The front legs and rear stiles
of a slat-back chair often were made of unseasoned birch, while the rails
and stretchers joining them together were of seasoned wood which already
had shrunk to its final size. In Windsor construction, the seat of a chair
was of unseasoned wood, while the remaining members were seasoned. In time,
the unseasoned parts of the chair would shrink and grip the other parts with
18
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a vice-like hold.
Chairmakers producing more sophisticated types of seating furniture
used all the basic techniques of their country cousins, but had in their
shops a much wider variety of tools and machinery. Hanging on the walls
or suspended from the ceiling were hand saws of various sizes, a tenon saw
for use in making mortise-and-tenon joints, bracket or fret saws for cut
ting on curved lines and, possibly, a framed veneer saw. Several different
types of chisels, each with its own name — forming chisel, framing chisel,
paring ch isel, mortise chisel and screw chisel — would be of use in making
close-fitting joints. Planes, ranging from the long jack plane for rough
work to molding planes with gracefully curving blades, also would have had
an important place near the workbench. Then too there were braces and
bits, augers, hammers, mallets, files and gauging tools such as calipers,
compasses, squares and ru les. Occupying floor space were a workbench and
a lathe with its necessary turning tools. Depending on the size of the
shop, the lathe would be the foot-powered type or a "great lathe" turned
by an apprentice.^
Until the second half of the nineteenth century, most tools pur
chased by Upper Canadian chairmakers were of English or United States manu
facture. The craftsman's choice undoubtedly depended on his national
origins or place of training, as the tools of England and America differed
in numerous small d e ta ils . Tools especially designed for his use were
commercially available in Upper Canada at least as early as the late 1820's
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20
when Theodore Turley, a gunsmith in York, advertised his selection of 2 "joiners and chair-makers’ bitts." Often, however, the tools of the
chairmaker were those'ha had brought with him from home. No duty was ■3 charged when they entered the province as part of his personal effects.
The role of the design book in deciding what the craftsman’s
finished chairs should look like was probably very small indeed. English
publications such as George Smith’s The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer1s
Guide (1826) and J . C. Loudon’s widely popular Encyclopaedia of Cottage,
Farm and Villa Architecture and Furniture (1833) both contained simple
designs for furniture which provincial chairmakers easily could have
followed. Yet neither of these books can be documented as having been
used by Upper Canadian chairmakers and only very rarely does an early
Ontario chair appear which can be related directly to a published source.
In 1839, the Toronto Mechanics In s titu te Library contained no books
at all designed for the use of the chairmaker. It did, however, possess
copies of Specimens of Ancient Decorations, Billington’s Architectural
D irector and Halfpenny’s A rchitecture,^ a l l o f which were out of date, but
which could have had some influence nonetheless. In. 1855>> the holdings
of the Library still v/ere very meager and old-fashioned. It was at this
late date that a copy of Hepplewhita's Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's
Guide, first published in 1788, made its appearance on the Institute
shelves.'’ Three years later, A. J. Downing's The Architecture of Country
Houses, already ten years old, was listed in the Library's catalog.^
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In the larger towns and c itie s of the United States and Great
Britain, chairs produced by Upper Canadians during the first half of
the nineteenth century might have seemed just as out of date and un
fashionable as the books which the provincial craftsman could have turned
to. Yet the retarditaire aspect of so much early Ontario furniture was
due less to the possibility that provincial craftsmen were looking at old
design books than to the fact that Upper Canadian cabinet- and chairmakers
were largely cut off from contact with'.the fashionable furniture they
needed for inspiration. Then too, chairmakers and their customers may
have preferred old and familiar styles. Socially, politically and cultu
ra lly , Upper Canada was a highly conservative place. In the towns, where
there was often considerable coming and going of British officials, whose
standard of living was sustained by fui'niture brought directly from home,
chairmakers may have been more aware of the meaning of sty le and fashion
than were craftsmen in more rural areas of the province. Yet even they
seem to have favored the practical and the uncomplicated, chairs which
blended elements of several observed or remembered styles in a manner
dictated by years of apprenticeship and practice.
Judging from the frequent mention of painted and "fancy" chairs in
the advertisements of early Ontario chairmakers and retailers, painting was
quite likely the rule, rather than the exception, when it came time to apply
the finishing touches to chairs made of common light-colored woods such as
pine, beech, basswood and birch. Daniel T iers, as early as 1802, was 7 importing paint to decorate his Windsor chairs. Dark green or black,
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colors widely employed on Windsor furniture of the time, was lik ely what
he used.
"Fancy" chairs were embellished with painted decoration applied
freehand or with sten c ils. In Upper Canada, they were advertised f i r s t by O the Kingston makers, Chester Hatch and Company, in l 8l£. Unfortunately,
no early chairs which may definitely be attributed to a Kingston maker are
known to survive. There is, however, a set of six chairs (illus. 15),
with finely painted landscape scenes adorning their broad crest rails,
existing today with a long history of ownership in an old Kingston family.
The fact that they are identical to chairs of New York City provenance,
now at the Peabody Museum in Salem,^ suggests that their place of origin
was the United S tates. But Kingston customs records p rio r to the year
18^3 have been lost, and it is difficult to tell just how many chairs and
other pieces of furniture were commercially imported at this early date
and how many entered the province as settlers1 effects.
In Kingston, and perhaps iri other Canadian towns as well, the
fashion for New York-style fancy chairs could well have been promoted by
the presence of New York-trained chairmakers. An advertisement in the
Kingston Chronicle for November £, l82lt, notes that John Duncan, a cabinet
maker in th at city , had recently hired two chairmakers - - o n e from Montreal
and one from New York City.
When subject to everyday use, painted furniture will soon lose its
original bright and colorful appearance. Painted decoration on chairs was
p articu larly vulnerable when subjected, as most must have been, to the
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. prolonged abrasion of restless sitters. Accordingly, many chairmakers in
Upper Canada included in their advertisements notice that they -would re
paint or touch up old chairs which were brought to th e ir shop. Only in
large communities, Kingston and York in particular, did professional
painters and gilders, men who did not claim to be manufacturers, enter
into business. Their existence must have been tenuous at best; for today
we know of their work only through a few.,- widely scattered newspaper
advertisements.
Greno and Sawyer advertised in Kingston in 1811 that they repaired
and repainted old chairs and carriages. In addition, they painted signs
and practiced gilding "with elegance and dispatch.
In York, V7hich gradually took over from Kingston as a furniture-
making center, J. Craig, Alexander Hamilton, John M. Waugh and Alexander
Drummond advertised during the la te l820's and early l830*s. Of them,
Alexander Drummond was certainly the most v ersatile — or the most immodest.
His advertisement in the Upper Canada Gazette for September 10, 1829, read,
SIGN, FANCY, AND ORNAMENTAL PAINTING.
Oil and Burnish Gilding, Bronzing, &c.
ALEXANDER DRUMMOND formerly of London and Liverpool, informs the citizens of York and its vicinity, that he has taken a Shop in King S treet, near the Court House, where he intends carrying on the above Branches,
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2U
together with Hera3.dry, H isto rical and Masonic Painting; Views of Gentlemen's Country Seats, perspective Drafts of Machinery, Fancy Pieces on Silk and Velvet, Fancy Pieces on Glass, Christalizing and Tablet Painting,. Transparent Window Curtains; Labelling and Enamelling on Show Cases and Apothecary's Bottles; Imitations of Mahogany, Bird-eye and Curled Maple, Rose-wood, Satin-wood, Walnut, B ritish and American oak; Ita lia n , Egyptian and Dark Marble, Granite and Freestone; Shell work, &c. Cabinet Furniture finished in imitations of Wood and Stone; Oil Cloths and Floor Carpets, Steam-Boat Cabins, Public Hails, P ulpits and A ltars, G ilt, Bronzed and Polished; Fancy and Windsor Chairs re-painted, Bronzed, and G ilt. N.B. - The above sh all be done in the la te s t London and Liverpool fashions, with neatness and despatch. A.D. also offers for sale, at his Shop, a large assortment of FANCY AND WINDSOR CHAIRS, warranted to be of the best quality, and finished in the la te s t New-York fashions.
Alexander Drummond, despite his origins in London and. Liverpool, saw fit
to include reference to "the latest New-York fashions" along with "the
latest London and Liverpool fashions." Evidently the name, "New York,"
held considerable importance among fashion-conscious circles in the
Upper Canadian capital of 1829*
If Alexander Drummond was all he said he was ;— an artist capable
of producing "Views of Gentlemen's Country Seats" as well as a workman
able to execute such mundane tasks as "Enamelling on Show Cases and
Apothecary's Bottles" — then his painted chairs may have been elaborate
indeed. They may have been as elaborate in their decoration as the
Kingston chairs which we already have noted.
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Judging, however, from the few chairs which have survived in the
province with their early decoration intact, painted chairs in Upper
Canada seldom'ventured beyond simple decorative motifs. Graining, stri
ping and stencilled groupings of fruit and flowers were used in modera
tion from the 1820's until late in the nineteenth century. Generally
speaking, the later the chair, the simpler and more stylized the deco
ratio n .
Stencils used by the chairmaker or painter could be, and were, cut
from ju st about any scrap of paper which happened to be lying about the
shop. Stencils exist today at Winterthur made from newspaper, cardboard,
and bits and pieces of an old account book. The number of stencils used
on any one individual piece depended on the complexity of the design and
the number of colors employed; for in the best work, each element required
an individual stencil. The colors came in the form of metallic powders,
not liquid paints, and were dusted, not brushed, over the stencil. An
almost three-dimensional quality could be achieved with the skillful
addition of a bit of lamp black as shading. Over the finished work, a
clear coating of lustrous varnish was applied.
For inspiration in his designs, the artist may have turned to
decorative wallpaper borders, as he was urged to do in Nathaniel Whittock's
The Decorative Painters1 and Gla z ie rs * Guide, published in London in 182?:
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.-.The workman will find a variety of patterns suited to his purpose from the ornamental borders at the paper hangers'; a ll he w ill have to do is combine them to make them suitable for chairs, cornices, etc. which he will have no difficulty' in doing by means of the tracing paper....
Whittock went on to caution the unskilled artist
to avoid introducing natural objects, such as roses, tulips, flowers, or fruit of any kind; animals, &c; as nothing looks so bad as such subjects ill represented; and every person th at looks upon them is capable of forming a judgment upon their correctness: whereas, if the painter confines himself to easy subjects, where the lines are graceful and the orna ments tastefully disposed, without representing any definite subject in nature, they will always please from their light ness and v ariety, and not be so open to general criticism .
To those craftsmen who attempted to paint chairs to look like stone or to
marbelize them, as Mr. Drummond seems by his advertisement to have done,
Whittock wrote scornfully,
...Nothing can be in worst taste, as no imitation should ever be introduced where the reality could not be applied if persons chose to go to the expense — and who would choose a marble chair? Chairs may be painted in imitations of any fancy wood; and i f chair makers were to turn th eir attention to forming lib rary , h a ll and passage chairs of common wood, and have them painted in imitation of finely-grained oak, and in some cases ornamented with proper gothic designs, they would, from th e ir lightness, elegance, and durability, supersede almost every kind of chair now in use.
Paints and powders were available to Upper Canadian re ta ile rs from
two different sources — England and the United States. In 1826, the adver
tisements of the Rochester Paint, Oil, & Dye Stuff, Ware House, and Ship
Chandlery' Store in York newspapers would suggest Rochester, New York, as
a possible early source of supply. Some merchants, however, dealt directly
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. with London and Liverpool, despite difficulties in shipping via the St.
Lawrence through Montreal. That same year, 1826, William Moore of York
advertised "direct from London and Liverpool...at Montreal prices...
30jj Kegs London Ground and White Lead — Red Lead...Dye Woods — Chalk
and Whiting — Black Lead.. .Chinese and Patent Green Point — Z~anC7
Ochre.
In Kingston, the chairmaker Chester Hatch sold painters' supplies
as- w ell as painted ch airs. The Gazette announced in 1816 th at Hatch
offered for sale "boiled linseed oil...by the barrel or smaller- quantity."
He also kept on hand "paints ready prepared for use" and dispensed "all
directions for using them gratis." J
In most instances, the chairmaker's or painter's shop was small —
in the country districts, a one-man operation; while in the towns, perhaps
employing an apprentice or two and maybe a journeyman laborer along with
the master craftsman. Assessment records occasionally tell us something
of the size of the shop; yet such records are widely scattered and incom
plete. In Toronto they do not begin until lQ3h, while in Kingston there
is nothing before the year I 8I4O. From the information available, it would
seen that even in the larg est population centers of the colony, chairmakj.ng
establishments were not very large and their operators not very wealthy.
Often they were run by men who were cabinetmakers as w ell.
In York, chairmaker Judah Monis Lawrence was one of the most pros
perous. In 183b he owned property on King Street assessed at l£6 . On
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it was a two-story building with six fireplaces. On four of these fire
places, Lawrence would have had to have paid a special c ity tax. The
records also reveal th at Lawrence kept two cows and one dog "of 3 Months
Old and upwards."^ Not far from Lawrence's property was the firm of
French and Wiman, also on King S treet. They too owned a two-story b u il
ding, but one with only too fireplaces and an assessment value of £1 1 0. ^
Some chairmakers owned no property at all, but rented space for their shop.
The chairmaker George Phipps, for instance, is known to have been renting,
in partnership with one Isaac M iller, from a Richard Northcote a t g2% per
y ea r.^
Unlike the shop of the cabinetmaker, the shop of the chairmaker was
likely to contain a considerable number of finished pieces. While cabinet
makers of the early nineteenth century spent most of th eir working time
constructing pieces which their clients had ordered, the chairmaker pro
bably took special orders only very rarely and in his advertisements was
more likely to refer to stock already made and on hand. A note in the
York customs records for l82h suggests that, in the early years of the
colony, chairmaking of a very special quality was beyond the ability of
the colonial craftsman and that order? had to be sent out of Upper Canada
to the United States. On March 2?th, there arrived "A Chair for Parliament
House valued £31.5/."^ Had there been a chairmaker in Upper Canada
capable of executing such an important piece of furniture, the order
surely would have been placed with him.
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By mid-century, the situ atio n had begun to change. With a rapidly
expanding market to sell to and the introduction of time- and labor-saving
machinery, the products of the growing colony became more impressive. A
perhaps overly enthusiastic traveler of the time wrote that the firm of
Jacques and Hay then were turning out "articles which, in point of elegance, 1R will match any of the products of France or England," But this was also
a time when the individual craftsman was finding it hard to compote with
the newly-opening furniture factories and their capacity for large-scale
production.
Significant changes were taking place also in the realm of painted
decoration. By the lOljO's, what once was the work of the skilled artisan
had come to be the pastime of the Victorian lady.In l 8h8 , instruction
was offered in the capital city in ^'painting on wood, in watercolours."
The objects of the ladies* artistic attention were to be "tables, . ]Q cabinet [ s j , and all kinds of fancy articles," perhaps including chairs.
Ey this time, fancy chairs and other articles of painted furniture had
lost their elegant appeal and, like needlework pictures and reverse-
painted glass, had been banished to the parlors of the middle class.
At mid-century, the fashion for graining was rapidly overshadowing
the popularity of earlier forms of painted decoration on chairs. Over the
variety of colors and natural grains present in common chairs of mixed
woods was painted an even-toned coating of brown paint. Over this initial
layer, black ink was applied, intended to suggest expensive figured rose-
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wood or mahogany. Today th is type o f decoration survives in quantity'on
Ontario chairs, particularly the slat-back variety made by domestic and
New York State chsirmaking factories (illus. U 6 ).
Much graining of furniture was, no doubt, also done at home by the
same ladies who were learning to paint on wood. Directions for graining
could be found in contemporary magazines and the necessary supplies pur
chased at numerous paint sto res. At Neil C. Love’s store in Toronto, for
instance, patrons could avail themselves of "Brushes and Artists Tools,... 20 Graining Brushes,... /~and~~7 Camel and Sable Hair Stripers." Stripers
would be used in drawing the narrow lin e s, usually in yellow or gold,
which outline the rails, stiles and seats or highlight the bamboo turnings
of so many nineteenth-century Ontario chairs.
The end of tho craft system in Upper Canada was already in sight in
the 1 8 3 0 ’s when more and more frequently the chairmaker found he could
purchase ready-made p arts — seats and turned legs, for instance — from
suppliers outside the colony a t a cost which was lower than th at a t which
he could make them himself. In selling his product, further changes came
about with the opening of what often were called "furniture warerooms" in
urban areas around the province from tho l830’s onwards. There the crafts
man's work was completely anonymous; he became a supplier, and the link
between furniture maker and buyer was destroyed.
Yet even before the development of the wareroom, the forerunner of
the furniture store of today, cabinetmakers and chairmakers regularly
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 31 engaged in methods of marketing th e ir products quite d ifferen t from the
rather romantic picture of artist-patron relationship we sometimes like to
impose on the day-to-day transactions of the early craftsman. Lotteries
were one of the more unorthodox ways of selling furniture in early Ontario,
and in Kingston the lottery method seems to have been favored particularly.
There in 1836, Anne Hunter, who operated a cabinetmaking establishment
following her husband's death, sold tickets on a group of fruniture inclu
ding twelve black walnut chairs upholstered in haircloth and valued at 21 £15. In 181j3, her son George sold tick ets on a group of furniture worth
more than £200 and including six walnut "Grecian" chairs (£9) and twelve
"Balloon" chairs (fl8)» Tickets went at twenty shillings apiece, but
apparently not enough adventurous souls were found to make the lottery 22 worthwhile. As happened elsewhere, the pieces were chosen so as to pro
vide the basic furnishings for all rooms of a small house. No doubt the
lottery system had its greatest appeal among the young or newly married.
A more common means of selling was the auction sale. As early as
1828, M. and R. Keighan, proprietors of the York Auction Mart & Commission
Ware-House, opposite the Market Square, were holding auction sales every
week.^-' In 1837 began the firm of P. J. and P. O’N eill. Besides being
large-scale manufacturers and importers of furniture, the O’Neill brothers
served as auctioneers and comraissi.cn agents, taking in furniture from
other makers, large and small, and selling it to the highest bidder in
their King Street auction rooms^ (illus. 1j3). One of their biggest
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. auctions, advertised as ''never before equalled on any occasion in Canada ,*1
included" 3.6 doz. Full French, Half French & Grecian Chairs, in Haircloth
or Damask, as may bs chosen, walnut and mahogany," "6 doz. Parlour Chairs,
walnut and mahogany," "l£ doz. Cane Seat do. do.," "1 Rocking do. with
spring seat, Damask, m ahcg^," "1 Recumbsn/t7 do, walnut," "1 Invalid do.
do.," and "1 Arm do. mahogany." Under tho heading, "plain Bedroom and
Kitchen Furniture," were the now unfashionable, but still very comfortable,
Windsor chairs. The sale lasted several days. ? Auctions such as these
helped to move furniture quickly -- an important consideration v?here sto
rage and display space were lim ited — and must have provided an essen tial
outlet for the. small craftsman in search of ready cash and a large market.
In the very early days of the colony, furniture auctions had served
a quite different purpose. They were generally much smaller, consisted
only of the property of one individual and more often than not were held
to settle an estate. Yet on occasion these early sales attracted wide
attention. When a British official moved to the colony, it was customary
for him to bring at least some furniture with him. Yet when he left Upper
Canada, the Imperial Government seems to have been most unwilling to bear
the expense of taking his furniture back again. Consequently, whenever
an important British administrator or military officer left the colony, a
sale was soon to follow. In l 8ll, a very important sale occurred in York
when the contents of Holyrood House, u n til then the home of Attorney
General William Firth, were auctioned off. Firth, who, according to a
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recent Canadian h istorian, "seems to have spent most of his term in the 26 province in a constant state of indignation and bad temper," lived none
theless in very high style indeed. While chairs were not sp ecifically
mentioned, ample space in the advertisements preceding the sale was given
over to the praise of "superb Mahogany Four Post Bedsteads," "Dining,
C3rd and Pembroke Tables," a "Dinner Service of Plate /iTe., silver / , 11
a "fine toned double Key'd Harpsichord and /~a~J Piano Forte inlaid with
Sattinwood and of beautiful Mechanism." From the lib rary were a "Cabinet
of curious antique Gems with MSS Catalogue Raisonne" and a "fine Pocket
Telescope by Bollond"^ — exotic items indeed in the backwoods of North
America.
The sale following the departure of Lieutenant-Governor Francis
C-ore in 1812 was even more exciting. Apparently the house and outbuildin
were cleaned out from top to bottom with everything being sold from the
five brooms and a mop purchased for ten shillings to the carriage priced
at £200. Altogether there were thirty-nine chairs included in the sale.
Six of these had rush bottoms and, along with a curly maple table and a 28 few other homely items, were probably of local manufacture.
Military officers lived especially well in the early days of the
colony. In 1818, the Upper Canada Gazette announced the sale of house
hold furniture belonging to the aristocratically-named Major General
Tinling Widdrington of Kingston. Along with chairs, tables, bedsteads
and red moreen curtains were "A Fine Piano Forte, with additional Keys,
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by Clemente; an elegant Harp, by Dodd andJ a Chariot, built by Hall,
Long Acre."^ Nine years later, when the 70th Regiment left the garrison
at York, a rich array of carpets, silver, ceramics, glass, curtains and 30 mahogany tables, sofas and chairs was sold. The outward show of British
authority was splendid indeed in a colony where by far the greatest number
of His Majesty's subjects lived in log houses.
The many sales which took place in the colony during its first few
decades of existence were probably the major source of fine English furni*-
ture for those few who could afford to buy it. Had the Imperial Government
seen fit to send highly skilled craftsmen, rather than their finished pro
ducts, to British North America, the story of the Upper Canadian chairmaker
might have been quite different indeed.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Footnotes
1. The best and most recent account of tools used by Canadians is Lorris . Russell, “Tools of the Trades," The Book of Canadian Antiques, ed. Donald Elake Webster (Toronto, 1978)j pp. 227-239.
2. The Colonial Advocate, May 17, 1827.
3. See, for instance, the case of a Mr. Granger 'who arrived in the colony June 1, 1889, "with his Tool Chests &c. after having served his appren ticeship in the S tates," in Upper Canada Customs, Correspondence and Returns, Belleville, I8l6-l889, vol. 3, Public Archives of Canada (cited hereafter as PAC).
It. Constitution and Rules of the City of Toronto Mechanics1 Institute; together with a Catalogue of the Books in the Library of the Institute (Toronto, 1839"), pp. 10-11.
3. Abstract cf the Act of Incorporation, By-Laws, and Catalogue of Books, of the Toronto Mechanics1 Institute (Toronto, 1835), p. 20.
6 . Catalogue of Books in the Library of the Toronto Mechanics 1 Institute "(Toronto, TBjyBJ, p. 2. Downing's book is liste d as Rural A rchitecture.
7* lfoper Canada Gazette; or, American Oracle, Jan. 23, 1802.
8 . Kingston Gazette, Sept. 19, l6l5.
9. Jeanne Minhinnick, At Home in Upper Canada (Toronto and Vancouver, 1970), p. 1 8 8 .
10. Kingston Gazette, May 7, 1811.
11. Nathaniel Whittock, The Decorative Painters' and Glaziers' Guide (London, 1827), pp. W -77.
12. The E_j_ L oyalist, Aug. 3, 1826.
13. Kingston Gazette, Sept. 6 , I 8l 6 .
1)4 . Toronto Assessment Records, S t. Lawrence ’Ward, 1838, Toronto City H all.
15. Ibid., St. George's Ward, 1838.
16. Ibid., St. Andrew's Ward, 1887.
35
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17. William Allan, An Account of Goods Imported from the United States, and Enterd at Port of York, vol. 1, Allan Papers, TCRL.
18. William Chambers, Thing,s As They Are in America (London and Edinburgh, l85h), p. 115".
19. Toronto P a trio t, Mar. 3, l 8h8 .
20. The Examiner, Nov. 5, 1851.
21. Joan MacKinnon, Kingston Cabinetmakers Before 1867 (197b), TS, Canadians Department, Royal Ontario Museum, pp. Gl-ii2 .
22. Ibid., pp. 55-57.
23. The Loyalist, July 19, 1828.
2^* The Examiner, May 22, l81ib.
25. The Examiner, June lb, 18)j 3 .
26. Gerald M. Ci’aig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years (Toronto, 1963), p. 63.
2?* T}ie York Gaz e tte , Aug. 17, 1811.
2®* Articles Sold to the following persons for Acct. of Governor Gore, K5 in Baldwin Room, TCRL.
29. Upper Canada Gazette, July 30, 1818.
30. The U. E. Loyalist, July lb, 1827.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER III
Trade in Chairs and Chair Parts
On the map, the S t. Lawrence River cuts a wide, clear path from the
Atlantic Ocean to the eastern waters of Lake Ontario. Yet from the bow of
a Durham boat or bateau, the mighty River was treacherous and unpredictable
Time and time again, the rushing waters were parted by rocks. Well-worn
paths leading from the banks of the River through dense forest and bush-
land marked the beginnings of each weary portage.
In the early l?80*s, the Royal Engineers began work on the first
canals above tha city of Montreal. A mere thirty inches deep, the canals
were enlarged around 1800 to allow for tho passage of flat-bottomed Durham
boats with their cargoes of imported tea, spices, crockery and other goods
shipped from the British Isles and the West Indies. At Kingston, supplies
destined for places farther west were transferred to larger, lake-going
v essels.
Further improvements were made in 1832 when the Rideau Canal was
opened from a point south of the Chaudiere Falls on the Ottawa River to
Kingston Mills on lake Ontario. This route was created primarily for
defense: in the event of a second United States invasion of the province,
the Rideau Canal was to be used as an altern ativ e means of communication
with Lower Canada. At no time did i t become a major trading route between
the two colonies.
Even after the hard journey to Kingston was past, there was still
no easy way of getting to the western reaches of Upper Canada. The way
37
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to Lake Erie was blocked by the rapids and mighty f a lls of Niagara u n til
after the completion of the Welland Canal in 1833. Even then, however,
the inadequacies of the canals above Montreal continued to be the bottle
neck of the whole S t. Lawrence-Great Lakes system. Not u n til the late
I 8!j0 's were the canals improved to such an extent th at navigation became
relatively easy from Montreal and beyond into Upper Canada.^-
If water transportation seemed difficult, traveling by road was
even worse. In 1793, Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe began construction of
Dundas S treet, a great m ilitary road which was intended to stretch from
the Quebec border to as far west as Detroit. Yet passing through sparsely
settled countryside and over difficult terrain, such a road could never be
kept in proper repair. In spring and fall, drivers found their carts and
wagons axle-deep in mud. In mid-summer, th eir cargo was damaged by inces
sant bumping and jolting along the way. Progress was slow: even in 1833
one weary traveler could calculate his average speed by stagecoach on an
Upper Canadian road as less than three miles per hour. Only in winter,
with a fine horse and a sleigh with a good pair of runners, could progress
be sw ift.^
Because of the problems bound to be encountered in shipping large
items from east to vest, Upper Canadians, apart from those in the eastern
most townships of the colony, would not normally have obtained chairs or
other furniture as part of commercial shipments from Lower Canada or the
British Isles. Daniel Tiers, who ordered "common chairs" from Quebec in
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1802, was a rare exception. So too were J. C. Godwin and Company in York
who, in 1828, announced "d irect from England...An assortment of Cabinet r> Furniture."
Predictably, only on a very few occasions did Montreal furniture
firms advertise in Upper Canadian newspapers. In 1819, Forster and Try,
M ontreal's leading cabinetmakers, announced by way of the Upper Canada
Gaz e tte ,
MESSRS. FO/H/STER & TRY impressed with a greatful sense of past favours, beg respectfully to intimate to the public, that they have on hand, a general stock of modern and substantial family Furniture; which possesses the advantage of being manufactured by themselves, of the best m aterials, and from the most recent London patterns; at the lowest English prices. They have just received, an elegant variety of Brussels and common Carpet, Hearth Rugs; Paper-Hangings, North Shore Feathers, a general assortment of Cabinet Brass Work, English curled Horse Hair & Hair seating, Mahogany, in Logs, Boards and Planks, Rose voile and Ebony Wood, Moreens of a ll colours, Table and Door Mats, with a small assortment of Tunbridge Ware, Painted floor Cloth for rooms and passages, Looking Glasses &c. &c. Messrs. F. & T. beg to assure those who may favour them with orders from Upper Canada or elsewhere that Floor Cloths, Carpets &c. will be cut exactly to the required dimensions, and all other Furni ture carefully packed and forwarded by the best conveyances and on the most reasonable terms.
Montreal, July, 9th 1819.^
While mention of furniture is made, the cabinetmakers' supplies, the floor
coverings, and other items which easily could be packed and shipped, re
ceive the greater amount of space in the advertisement.
The advertisement of the Montreal firm of John Fotheringham and
Company in a Kingston paper of 8 lll offered "a few pieces of hair seating
for a chair bottom" but declined to mention anything about sending the
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. chairs themselves.^ In 1826, one George Willard of York announced in the
Gazette that his order of "12 Rush bottom Chairs, either loose or in a
crate" had been lo s t enroute from Montreal — testimony enough of the
risks of transportation in early Upper Canada.^
For those Upper Canadians who lived in the central or western parts
of the colony, trade across the Great Lakes with the United States must
have seemed far more attractive than the long and arduous route to Lower
Canada. In the early years of the centurj', even the merchants of Montreal,
who dominated the new commercial lif e of the Canadas as they once had domi
nated the fur trade, saw distinct advantages in trading with the Americans.
They envisaged the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes system as a giant funnel through
which the raw m aterials of western Canada and the United States would be
drawn out and into the markets of Great Britain in exchange for British
manufactured products. They would be the middlemen and make a l l the p ro fits.
The Canadians failed to anticipate, however, that their grand scheme
might not meet with the approval of their American trading partners. In
time, the rapid growth of an American manufacturing industry, the im pli
cation of high U. S. tariffs on British and Canadian goods, the opening
of the Erie Canal and the aggressiveness of American merchants dashed their
ambitious hopes in pieces. From the start, Upper Canadians thwarted the
plans of the Montrealers by purchasing manufactured items from the United
States whenever and wherever it was economically advantageous to do so.
The American trade came to have an immense impact on the economic lif e of
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Upper Canada in general and on the work of the Upper Canadian chairmaker
in particular.
In the frontier trading post of Sandwich, now known as Windsor,
records show that chairs were imported from across the Detroit River as
early as 1808. It was in that year that an unidentified Sandwich merchant
purchased six chairs at a cost of eight shillings from one William Duff of
D etroit.^
Another early instance of importation of United States-made chairs
into Upper Canada appears in the 8 Il 6 Niagara customs records, where a
P. H. McDougsll is noted as having purchased "1 Settee chair value <£l.£n
The duty charged on Mr. McDougall's chair was high -- 8s 9d, th a t being O thirty-five per cent of the assessed value of the chair.
In both instances, the importers probably purchased the chairs for
their own personal use. In neither do the records suggest that any large-
scale commercial importation of chairs was in progress at the time.
I t is interestin g to note, however, th at in 1817, one A. Hunsbury
of Niagara did import "18 Spinning wheels, in pieces" at a value of ^13.10.
The duty charged was a steep ^lt.lH.6 .^ This would suggest that even in
1817 woodworkers across the border could compete effectiv ely with th eir
Canadian cousins even though a relatively high duty was imposed on all
manufactured goods entering the B ritish province.
Further evidence of early American inroads into the Canadian fu rn i
ture market is found in a letter written at Kingston by Ezra Rogers of
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Carthage, Hew York, in the summer of 1819. Ezra Rogers, a farmer-turned-
chairmaker, had chartered a sailing vessel, loaded it with chairs and come
to Upper Canada. There he paid the required duty of ten per cent, a charge
■which some of his fellow craftsmen apparently had tried to avoid: not long
before Rogers’ a rriv a l, customs o fficers in the colony had seized one hun
dred chairs belonging to a Hr. Wadsworth of Canandaigua. Once Rogers had
got his stock safely into Kingston, he obtained the services of a Mr.
Steadman who agreed to assist him in finding customers. His business com
pleted, he returned home with six dollars in his pocket.^
In calculating the number of chairs brought into Upper Canada from
the United States during the early nineteenth century, detailed customs
records are our chief source of information. Yet almost invariably, the
records which t a l l us most were those kept by the. customs co llecto r for
his own personal use, not the formal quarterly reports required by the
colonial government.
A great many of these detailed records were discarded after the
collector re tire d . Those which have survived often are buried in co llec
tions of personal and family papers in various parts of the province and,
in at least one instance, in the United States.
Surviving records for the port of York from 1818 to 1828 indicate
that commercial shipments of chairs or chair parts arrived in the capital
in 1819) 1820, 1821, 1823 and l82li. On December 12, 1819, came a shipment
of three Windsor chairs valued a t $2 and thirty-two fancy chairs valued at
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. £20. On July 22, 1820, came th irty Windsor chairs valued a t j J , in d i
cating th at by th is time a Windsor chair in Upper Canada sold for ju st
a little more than one third the price of. a more fashionable fancy chair.
Four months la te r arrived "iiO Chairs", at three shillings apiece. Then,
on May 2lf, 1821, the first reference to chair parts appeared in the York
records when collector William Allan noted a large shipment of "5>00 Chair
Bottoms & two doz of chairs valued a t £21.15." Perhaps the York market
was saturated for a while, for another reference to chairs does not occur
until more than two years later. It was then, on October 7, 1823, that
eight dozen chairs valued at £33 — at that price, probably Windsors —
arrived in town. Some five months later, On March 29, l82h, came "A
Chair for Parliament House" valued at the princely sum of £31.5."^
This almost certainly was the chair described by James S. Buckingham
after his visit to the Legislative Council Chamber in the late 1830's.
Buckingham wrote,
This Throne is of fine dark polished wood, with an overhanging canopy, lined with deep crimson velvet, surmounted by the crown. The chair of state — the ascent to which is by three or four projecting semicircular steps, carpeted with crimson cloth — is elaborately carved with suitable devices, for the support of a representative of royalty — though the work was executed, I learnt, bv a republican carver 5.n the democratic city of New York I**
Evidently patriotic sentiment was of little importance when it came to
making or buying furniture. As if a New York-made throne in the Council
Chamber were not enough, "Yankee tables made in Buffalo" graced the homes 11 of the local gentry. J
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission uu
I t was in the early 1830’s th at the great influx of American-made
furniture — chairs in particular — began in earnest. The opening of the
Erie Canal system in l8?5 proved a serious blow to the old St. Lawrence
route by making possible for the f i r s t time the uninterrupted flow of
cargo from the Great Lakes to the sea arid turning the once sleepy towns
of Buffalo, Rochester and Oswego into thriving commercial and manufactu
ring centers. The Canal, it van said, "turns, like the philosopher's
stone, whatever it touches into gold." ^ 1
C ertainly the differences in the economic state of the two countries
soon became readily apparent. "On the United States side," wrote one
trav eler,
large towns /a re / springing up..., with piers to protect them in harbour, coaches rattling along the road, and trade evidenced by waggons, carts and horses, and people on foot, in various directions. On the Canadian side, although in the immediate vicinity, an older settlement and apparently better land, there are only two or three stores, a tavern or two, a natural harbour^- without piers, but few vessels and two temporary landing places.
A contemporary description of Rochester crowed that "the Erie Canal...
together with its splendid water power, renders its increase of wealth and
population almost without lim its." 1^1
The town of Oswego came to have a share in the Canadian trade once
its growth as a trading center was ensured by the completion of a feeder
canal, joining Oswego with the Erie, in 1828. Soon afterward, the Oswego
forwarding firm of Bronson, Marshall and Company announced to the merchants
of York and i t s v icin ity ,
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. We are connected with a respectable & expeditious line of canal boats — have new and substantial schooners -- and a spacious stone warehouse at Oswego. Our agents at New York, Troy, Albany, Utica &c. will, at all times, contract to deliver property, at as low rates as any responsible forwarders on the route. '
No doubt much of the forwarding trade of Bronson and Marshall and other
sim ilar organizations depended considerably on shipments of wheat and
other natural products. In the year l83h, the Welland Canal carried
22ir,285 bushels of wheat bound for Oswego. This was in striking contrast 13 with the mere hO,63h bushels the Canal carried for Montreal. Yet as the
Oswego advertisement makes clear, the way was now opened for all sorts of
American manufactured products to come the other way, into Canada, from
deep in New York S tate.
It was to the promising town of Rochester that young Charles
Robinson and his five brothers came in ld2lJ> to begin what grew to be one
of the larg est chairvnaking factories in New York State and one of the
chief suppliers of chairs to Upper Canadians. The Robinsons came from
New England and established their factox’y on the Genesee River. I t was
Charles who managed the business and whose mark "C. ROBINSON,/ MAKER,
ROCHESTER, N„Y„" (illus. US), was impressed on the crest rails of his
finished chairs. Wrote one enthusiastic visitor to the Robinson factory
in 18^1 ,
He has here an extensive suite of rooms, which have a ll the busy appearance of a "temple of industry" when the operatives are at work. Some th irty men are here employed, whose united labors turn out about £0 ,0 0 0 chairs of all the various descriptions, in the course of a year, which may be valued at fifteen thousand
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. dollars. Let the -world be convinced that Rochester is a manufacturing city. The lower floor is occupied by Mr. Oliver Robinson, who turns out a great many bedsteads in the course of a year. These gentlemen are among our most enterprising merchants and worthy citizen s, and xie wish them abundant su c c e ss.^
Robinson employed, in addition to his thirty workmen, child labor at
R ochester's Western House of Refuge. There young boys put together cane
and rush seats for the sum of fifteen cents for a seven-and-a-half-hour
day.^ 20
In his advertisements, Robinson offered to provide "AT WHOLESALE,
a l l kinds and q u a litie s of CANE, FLAG and WOOD SEAT CHAIRS, and a general
assortment of all goods connected with the chair trade." He accepted
orders "from a ll p arts of the United S tates and Canada" and offered to
deliver his chairs and chair parts "at the Canal and Rail Road Depots,
FREE OF CHARGE." Judging from the large number of marked Robinson
chairs still to be found in southern Ontario (illus. hh, h$, b 6 , li7), the
Canadian trade of this Rochester chairmaking firm was large indeed.
Yet Charles Robinson was not the only Rochester chairmaker who
catered to the Canadian market. The firm of Frederick Starr in I8lj0
advertised a wide variety of chairs, ranging from old-fashioned Windsors
to upholstered "French Chairs* and "Grecian" chairs of mahogany. Cane
seats were offered with the promise that "all orders from the country or 22 Canada, will be promptly attended to."
The aggressiveness of Rochester businessmen was well demonstrated
in 1835 when the Oswego firm of E. Brown and Company not only advertised
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th e ir chairs in Upper Canada, but sent an agent, to Kingston and opened a
showroom there. There they promised to keep on hand
direct from their manufactory at Rochester a general assortment of chairs of the most superior m aterials and workmanship, con sisting of curled maple, cane seats, scroll top with either plain or banister backsj also imitation rose wood cane bottom, gilded and bronzed with either slat or roll top, together with Boston rocking, sewing, nurse, and a superior article of office arm c h a ir. ...21
Needless to say, such developments did not sit well with Canadian
craftsmen and manufacturers. At least as early as 1830 petitions were
drawn up urging the Legislative Assembly in York to place tig h te r controls
on the importation of American goods''. It was on February 2Uth of that
year th at the Assembly considered
the petition of Thomas Wallis and nine others, Mechanics, of this Province, praying for an alteration in the law imposing duties on timber and furniture, imported from the United States into this Province.
The petition was-referred to a committee the following day and, as often
happened, never was heard from a g a in .^
Some months la te r, however, the chair- and cabinetmakers of the
province seem to have become better organized and, in a flurry of petitions
and signatures, besieged the Assembly with their pleas for help. The first
assault was led by the chairmaker Chester Hatch who had mustered the support
of 2$9 others, "mechanics of Kingston and the province generally." First
brought to the attention of the Assembly on January 18, 1831, Hatch’s
petition prayed that
means may be devised for stopping the great influx to this
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Province of manufactured articles from the United States, which so in terferes with the industry of the p etitio n ers, as nearly to render abortive their utmost efforts to procure an honest livelihood.^
Three days later, another petition arrived, this one signed by Asa Youmans
and seventy-six others, "mechanics of Belleville, and generally through
the Province." Youmans and his cohorts also complained about the great
influx of American manufactured goods and asked that a law be passed
requiring that every article entered at the provincial customs houses be oc? stamped and that a l l unstamped imports be confiscated. 7 This latter
request suggests that many imported items never were presented for customs
inspection and thus came into Upper Canada duty free. A further petition,
requesting the same system of stamping imported articles, was read on
January 29th. Its signers were Francis D. Cockrane and ninety-three
others, all mechanics from Frontenac County.
Also in January, 1831, came a second petition from Thomas Wallis,
this time in the company of four others from York, asking that the duty
imported on "manufactured articles of wood" be raised "so as to enable
mechanics in th is province to compete with those in the neighbouring
country.The campaign continued with the complaints of forty workmen
from C-obourg against "the influx of manufactured articles of furniture oft from the United States." Then in March came the last of this long series
of p e titio n s to the eleventh Parliament of Upper Canada when James
Armstrong and ten others, "inhabitants and manufacturers of the town of
York," asked that a duty higher than the then current fifteen per cent
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ad valorem fee be placed on manufactured items brought in from the
United States.^
But when all was said, little or nothing was done and the condi
tions of Upper Canadian trade were not fu lly looked into u n til the reform-
minded Assembly of 1835 heard the Reports of its Select Committee Appointed
to inquire into the State of Trade and Commerce of Upper Canada. The
Reports made several recommendations, including one which would havo
granted a bounty to importers of such commodities as pig iron, tin plate,
printing presses and machinery in order to give a much-nseded boost to
colonial industry.Yet little thought was given to the pleas of Upper
Canadian craftsmen to keep certain commodities out of the colony.
The Reports did confirm, however, the petitioners' charges that
many imported items entered Upper Canada illegally. "It would be very
difficult," the Reports said,
to ascertain the extent of trade in Upper Canada with the United States; the contraband commerce carried on in defiance of fiscal regulations imposed by the United Kingdom Parliament., and of the United States tariff laws, is very extensive....31
By means of letters sent to all customs collectors in the colony, the
Committee had hopedto gain a detailed account of a ll items imported from
the United States during the year 183b. While, a completely accurate
rendering was made impossible by the activities of smugglers, the results
of the survey show, b e tte r than any other document of the time, the extent
to which furniture and other household items were imported into the colony
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from across the border in the United States. The following tables have
been drawn from the Reports.
PORT OF ENTRY DESCRIPTION OF GOODS ASSESSED VALUE Si s d
Amherstburgh Clocks 13 10 0 Furniture 2k 15 0 Glass and glassware 1 16 9
Bath Clocks, 158 pieces 12$ 0 0
Belleville Clocks 15 0 0
Brockville Chairmaker's articles 3 2 6 Cabinet-maker's wood and ware h3 7 6 Clocks, wooden, 1 1 10 0 Furniture 22 10 0 Glass and glass ware 5 0 0
Burlington Clocks, 2ii0 210 0 0 Glassware 128 k 3 Musical Instruments 2 11 3
Chippawa Chair-makers articles, 317 chairs 65 6 3 Clocks, 12 wooden 10 10 0 Clock movements and parts 66 7 6 Furniture 150 0 0 Glass and glassware 180 10 0 Musical Instruments 16 0 0
Cobourg Chair-makers articles 2h 12 1 Cabinet-maker 3 ware 57 6 3 Glass and glassware 31 0 3 Musical instruments, 3 h 15 0
Cornwall Clocks, 2 5 0 0 Musical instruments, 1 piano U0 0 0
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Dover Chair, makers a rtic le s 9 15 0 Cabinet makers ware 1 7 3 Clocks, wooden 12 0 0 Glass and glassware 11 5 8
Fort Erie Chair-maker1s articles 3 r> 6 Cabinet-maker's ware U3 7 6 Furniture 22 10 0 Glass and glass ware 5 0 0
Ha Howell Cabinet-maker's ware 6 1 3 Clocks, 1 2 0 0 Glass and glass-ware 0 12 6
Kingston Cabinet-makers * vrares, - Cherry boards 2550 f t . , 121 d itto Mahogany /no v aluation/ Clocks 253 0 0 Glass and glasswares 99 y 11 Musical Instruments 20 0 0
Newcastle Glass and glassware 1 18 1*
Niagara Cabinet-maker’s ware 8 18 h Clocks, Ij.2 37 10 0 Glass and glass-ware 21 0 0
Port Burnell Cabinet-maker*s ware U6 15 0 Glass and glassware 2 3 n-*-? l
Port Colborne Chairs, lt>- doz. 12 0 0 and Maitland Cabinet wares, (makers) 6 16 0 Glass and glassware 12 2 6
Port Kopa Cabinet-maker's ware 13 16 0 Glass and glass-vara 0 12 6
Port Stanley Chair-maker1s articles 7 0 0 Cabinet-maker1s ware 119 6 6 Clocks 33 15 0 Furniture 6 12 6 Glass and glassware 157 6 8 Musical instruments 2 m it
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Prescott Cabinet-makers* ware 166 l 7 Chairs 29 12 6 Clocks, wooden 2h 15 6 Glass and glassware 2 10 17 Joiner's planes 5 8 1
Queenston Chairmakers articles 12 10 0 Cabinet-maker's ware h 11 11 Clocks 78 1 3 Glass and glassware 25 l 6
Sandwich Chairmakers articles 11 2 6 Cabinet makers ware 30 6 3 Clocks 3 15 0 Glass and glassvrare 18 11 8 Musical instruments 29 0 0
Torfc/T.'or onto Chairmaker's articles 10 2 6 Clocks 5h 12 6 Furniture 66 15 0 Musical Instruments h 12 6
The tables show that, in 183U, a substantial quantity of chairmakers'
articles and cabinetmakers 1 ware arrived in the colony from the United
States. Chairmakers 1 articles would have included chair legs, posts, rails
and seats, while cabinetmakers' ware probably consisted of sawn lumber,
veneer, inlay, drawer pulls, locks and casters. Also entering Upper Canada
were large numbers of clocks, probably of New England manufacture, a sub
stantial quantity of glass and glassware and some musical instruments and
finished pieces of furniture.
The extent of Upper Canada’s export trade with the United States
may never be ascertained; for, wrote one harried customs officer to the
Committee, "the truth is, whatever articles are exported.. .to the United 35 S tates, -leave here in the night and are smuggled into th a t country."
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 53
Detailed customs records for tho years lft3<9 to 3 8liO and paSr'tfi bf
I 8I4I, 18U3, l 8hii, I81t6 and 1 3h9 survive from the port o.f Toronto, ’’Toronto,"
being the name adopted by the town of York in l83h. On the whole, they pro-
vide more information than do the earlier York records; in most instances
they list the importer's name and, beginning in i 8li3 , often note the value,
in New York currency, of the items imported.
From the Toronto records, it would appear that the chairmaker
Richard French was the city's largest single importer of chair parts.
During the years 1838 to 1886, the records, incomplete though they are,
show that French brought in five lots of "choir stuff," ten bundles of
"chair stuff," 372 chair bottoms, twenty-four cane seats, eighty-four cane
seats and " fittin g s," and 21$ pieces of "furnishings." "Chair stuff"
almost certainly refers to chair legs, rails, posts and, possibly, seats,
even though mention is made of seats being imported separately. The dif
ference in si'/.e, if any, between a "lot" of chair stuff and a "bundle" is
not clear, nor is the meaning of the terms, "fittin g s" and "furnishings" —
although these latter may refer to screws or pegs with which to put the
chairs together. The distinction made in the records between chair bottoms
and cane seats may sometimes be purely arbitrary; although "chair bottoms"
could also have referred to woven, rush and plank seats.
In 1839, Horace Wiman, once a partner of Richard French, imported
liOO chair bottoms and one lot of chair stuff for himself.
P. J. O'Neill of the O’Neill brothers' cabinetmaking and auction
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establishment appears in the records as a different sort of importer, one
who imported finished chairs and other furniture, rather than parts to be
assembled. Under his name is found mention of four boxes of chairs, th irty
bundles of chairs, twenty-four black walnut chairs, twelve rocking chairs,
forty-eight maple chairs and, simply, "U8 chairs." Yet O'Neill also brought
in supplies for cabinetmaking, upholstering and piano making. "l86h feet
Lumber, 3 Cases Veneers," "600 lbs Feathers," "9 Bales Batting," "a Lot of
Piano Screws, Wire &c" — these are but a few of the shipments which once
made their way into the 0'Neills' shop.
Other names which occur in the Toronto records are those of Jacques
and Hay, William Campbell, Samuel Cor.way, N. [Tf Mark, V/. Chandler, Mahy &
Donohoe /T /, Joseph Beckely, I . Rigney and Company, T. W. (possibly Thomas
Wallis, the Toronto cabinetmaker-cum-petitioner, or Thomas Watts,an uphols
te re r), and G. H. Oheeny, William Chaney and J . S. Cheeny, lik ely members
of the same family. All imported at least on9 large shipment of chairs or
chair parts from the United States. Values quoted in the records indicate
that they could have had cane-seated chairs, the most common type of finished
chair imported, for $1,2^.apiece. Cane seats went for $lj.00 a dozen, while
cane itself came in small quantities for $ 1 .0 0 per pound.
Occasionally shipments arrived in town destined for the use of an
Upper Canadian who was not a craftsman but who seems just to have preferred
the work of Americans when it came time to buy furniture for his own use.
On June 6 , l8h2, one such individual, a.Mr. Howard, could have walked down
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. to Toronto Harbor to see his new bedstead, his feather mattress, his six
maple chairs, his bureau, his sofa and his table being taken off the boat.
For a ll th is he had paid $52.15 in New York currency and .3-3 to the
customs collector — in all, probably no more than a Toronto maker or dealer
would have charged for comparable merchandise.
At the port of Sarnia, small shipments of chairs and other furniture
far outnumbered cargoes of parts and large consignments of craftsmen's
supplies during the years I8I1O to l8h5. 0n3y a Mr. Cameron and a Mr.
Durell seem to have purchased chairs and chair parts in quantity. Cameron
imported seventy-two chairs, including two dozen "cottage chairs" and two
rocking chairs during the time between November 7, I 8h0 , and June 9, 181j2.
Durell imported "Lumber for Chairs" on December 29, 18)42 , and 388 pieces 35 of "Turned wood for chairs" on August 5, lSb3« Both these men may have
been dealing with chairmakers in Detroit, just fifty miles away by water.
Detroit was also the likely source of supply for those individuals in
Sarnia and v ic in ity who ordered chairs and other furniture from the United
States for their own private use.
The influx of Detroit-made chairs into the southwestern part of the
province was great enough to cause cno Chatham craftsman in 18U6 to emphasize
th a t the Windsors he sold were of his own manufacture and not imported from
Detroit.-^* Probably most Detroit chairs entered the area via the port of
Windsor.
In Kingston, seven importers of chairs are noted in customs records
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which survive for parts of tho years I81i3 and 18J16. During this time,
Edmund Avery imported fifty chair seats and one lot of chair stuff, while
John Burley imported two hundred chair seats and one lot of chair stuff.
L. Yeckley and R. M itchell each brought in one dozen chair seats, while
I. Sanger imported one dozen chairs, E. Leonard, two dozen and James Casey 37 eight-and-s-balf dozen, four dozen of which were Windsors.
At the much smaller port of Wellington in Prince Edward County, two
relatively large-scale commercial importers of chairs and chair parts can.
be identified in records covering the period from I8J46 to 18^7 and the year
1861. On November 28, 18|?6, the ship Elizabeth from Oswego landed a t
Wellington with a cargo of 129 chairs for Amos Garrett. Along with the
chairs were thirteen bedsteads, four sofas, four full-size bureaus, four
toy bureaus, two ’’Quartettes" — probably small quartetto tables which came
in nests of four — two writing desks, four looking glasses, some moldings,
some cabinetmaker1s hardware and "£l feet of Veneers." That same day there
arrived "21 Cottage Chairs and 6 Rocking Chairs" on the Anna Marla, also
from Oswego, for Francis M itchell, On July 31, l 8£l, Mitchell received a
seconcj load from Oswego, th is ono composed of "36 chairs, 6 Rockers & 6
Bedsteads," As happened in Sarnia, numerous small shipments of furniture,
enough to equip a room or two and probably ordored by a householder rather
than a craftsman, came into port as well.
Whatever their political differences might have been, Upper
Canadians took full advantage of whatever bargains their United States
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. trading partners had to offer. Canadian chairmakers looked to the growing
port c itie s on the other side of the Great Lakes and the S t. Lawrence for
chairs and chair parts at prices the;/ could not match. In the end, this
meant th at Canadian chair facto ries were slow to develop and native produc
tion remained on a relatively small scale. Yet by the l850's, changes were
in the wind. On a bright May morning in l8f?3, the shrill sound of a steam
locomotive's whistle echoed through the forests north of the capital as the
f i r s t tra in in Upper Canada made its way from Toronto to Aurora. Soon a fte r,
railway lines extended east and west, the once quiet. Canadian timberlands
saw the intrusion of lumber camps and Reciprocity on the Great Lakes brought
to Canadian farmers unprecedented prosperity.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Footnotes
1. Gerald M. Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years (Toronto, 1963), pp. 250-160.
2. Eric Wilfrid Hounsom, Toronto in 1810 (Toronto, 1970), pp. 18-26.
3* L oyalist, Sept. 27, 1828.
U. Upper Canada Gazette, July 22, 1819.
5. Kingston Gazette, May 28, lBll.
6 . Upper Canada Gazette, Dec. 23, 1826.
7. Account book of an unidentified Sandwich merchant ( 180U-I809), p. U59, PAO, Commercial Records, No. 6 8.
8 . Port of Niagara Customs Returns, I8l5-l8l8, Ironside Papers, BurtorT’Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.
9. Ibid.
10. George H. H arris, "Early Shipping on the Lower Genesee River: Reminiscences of Captain Hosea Rogers," The Rochester Historical Society Publication Fund Series, Vol. 9 (Rochester, 1930), p. 100.
11. William Allan, An Account o_f Duties on Goods Imported from the United S tates, and Kntc-rd a t Port of York, Vol. 1, Allan Papers, TCRL.
12. James S. Buckingham, Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the other British Provinces in North America (London and Paris, l8U3), p. 15.
13. See Philip Shackleton, Tho Furniture of Old Ontario (Toronto, 1973), p. 27.
1U. Henry Tudor, Narrative of a Tour in North America (London, 183U), p. 290.
15. Joseph Pickering, Emigration, or No Emigration: being the Narrative of the Author, (an English farmer") from the Year l82lj to 1830 "("London, IB30), p. 37.
16. Patrick Shirreff, A Tour through North America (Edinburgh, 1835), p. 87.
17. Colonial Advocate, Mar. 17, 1831.
58
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18. Donald Creighton, The Empire of the St. Lawrence (19375 rpt. Toronto, 1956), p. 251.
19. Rochester Daily Advertiser, Kar. 21, 1851.
20. Jo3n Lynn Schild, "Another Robinson Chair," Rochester Times Union, April 29, 1959.
21. Dewey'3 Rochester City Directory, 1855, n. pag.
22. King's Rochester City Directory, and Register, l81jl, n. pag.
23. Upper Canada House of Assembly, Journal, 1830, pp. 67, 69, PAO.
2k. Ib id ., 1831, pp. 16, 18.
25. Ibid., p. 21
26. Ibid., p. 32.
27. Ib id ., p. 29.
28. Ibid., p. 29.
29. Ibid., p. 9k.
30. Three Reports from the Select Committee Appointed to inquire into the State of the Trade and Commerce of Upper Canada: Together with the Minutes of Evidence, and an Appendix (Toronto, 1835), First Report, p. vi.
31. Ibid., Second Report, p. 15.
32. Ibid., pp. 6-17.
33. Ibid., p. 8 .
3U. Toronto Customs House Manifests, I 836-I8LI, PAO; Toronto Customs Register, IFSFlHli?, Vol. 1, PAC, R.G.~ 16, A5-3.
35. Sarnia Customs R egister, l8hO-l8U5, Vol. 1, PAC, R.G. 16, A5-25.
36. Chatham Gleaner, Nov. 3, 18U6.
37. Kingston Customs Returns, I8h3-l8[i6, Vol. 1, PAC, R.G. 16, A5-28.
38. Wellington Customs Register, 18U6-1861, PAO.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTJfiR IV
Factory Production Begins
The 18140 ’s brought with them the end of an era. In I 8I4I , Upper
and lower Canada were united and came to be known o ffic ia lly as Canada West
and Canada East — although the old names held on for decades. In I 8I46 ,
word came from Westminster that the Imperial Government had terminated its
policy of preferential trade with the colonies in favor of free trade with
the world. To some, the English-speaking merchants of Montreal especially,
these developments meant nothing less than the destruction of Canada's
foreign trade — which was damaged already by the commercial aggressiveness
of the United States — and domination of colonial government by the French
and the agrarian interests of western farmers. Adding to the uncertainty
of the time was a widespread commercial depression which le f t the newly-
improved S t. Lawrence canals h alf empty and spread bankruptcy among the
proud commercial houses of Montreal. Annexation to the United States seemed
to some to be the only remedy left for the commercial ills of the colonies.
Yet talk of annexation came to a halt in the new decade of the
1850'3 . As the trading world entered a new period of prosperity, with
risin g prices, gold pouring out of Australia and the American west and the
completion of thousands of miles of new railway lines, the future of British
North America began to look bright. By the Reciprocity Treaty of 185b,
United States tariff barriers were broken down and, until the Treaty lapsed
in 1865, Canadian timber and agricultural products were permitted to enter
60
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the large American market free of duty. At the same time, greater tariff
barriers were set up by Canadians in order to help finance the expensive
scheme of railway building then underway. Steps were taken to give protec
tion to Canadian manufactured products at a time when Canadians had more
money to spend than ever before.^
The greatest single development which led to the rise of Canadian
chair- and cabinetmaking factories at mid-century was the opening up of the
lumber industry in the Ottawa Valley, Simcoe County, the Grand Valley and
the land around Georgian Bay. Railways — the Northern, the Grand Trunk,
the Buffalo and Lake Huron, and the Great Western—linked the forests and
the towns and brought easier access to lucrative markets in the United
S tates. There long-established woodworking industries had begun to take
their toll on the once bountiful forests of the northeast. Wrote one
Canadian historian,
Lumbering created a whole new society; i t opened the doors for industry. By l 66l, Upper Canada could boast 15 axe and edge- tool factories, 33 plants producing sashes and doors, bl shingle factories and lh 3 plants described as producing "cabinet ware." A ll these industries were d irectly created by the lumber trade. . Not only did timbering produce the raw materials which these trades used, but it lured capital into the country, capital which was the lifeblood of the entire economy of British North America.
In 1861, i t was Simcce County which was Upper Canada's leading producer of
sawn lumber. That year alone saw 20?,9$lt>000 board feet emerge from its
many sawmills*^
It was to the forests of Simcoe County that John Jacques and Robert
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Hay, Toronto cabinet.- and chairmakers, turned their attention in the early
1850‘s. John Jacques had come to Toronto in 1831, in the days when the
f i r s t c ity of Upper Canada was s t i l l the backward v illag e of York. Of
Huguenot descent, he had been born in Cumberland, England, in l80li ^ and
received his training as a cabinetmaker in Wigtown, Galloway, Scotland, and
in London. During his f i r s t four years in the colony, Jacques was employed
in three different shops, including those of Thomas Gilbert and William
Maxwell.^ In 1835, John Jacques went into partnership with William Hay, a
Scotsman who also had come to Upper Canada four years e a rlie r. Hay had
been born in Tippermuir, Perthshire, Scotland, in 1808 and apprenticed to
a Perth cabinetmaker a t the usual age of fourteen. Between them, Jacques
and Hay had the equivalent of $800.00 to buy out William Maxwell in 1835 and
find two apprentices
From very modest beginnings in premises on King S treet rented from 7 chairmaker Richard French at j[25■i per year, the firm of Jacques and Hay
grew steadily. Import records from the 1830's and 'IjO's note orders for
veneers, "Case Trimmings," marble, varnish, glue and, in 18U3, nine dozen 8 chair seats and twenty-eight pounds of cane. By 1850, Jacques and Hay
were far and away the largest furniture manufacturers in the province. The
traveler-author William Chambers wrote of their factory,
I t consists of two large brick buildings, commodiously situated on the quay, and in its various branches gives employment to upwards of a hundred persons. Conducted from floor to floor by one of the partners, I here for the first time saw in operation the remarkably ingenious machinery for planing, turning, mor ticing, and effecting other purposes in carpentry, for which the
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United States have gained much deserved celebrity, and which I subsequently saw on a vast scale in Cincinnati, Besides the finer class of drawing-room furniture, made from black walnut- wood, an inferior kind is here made for the use of imigrants at a price so low, that importation of the article is entirely superseded. So perfect is the machinery, that from the rough timber a neat bedstead can be made and put together in the short space of two minutes
When the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Union Railroad, la te r known as
the Northern, began to push its way north of the capital in 18£3, first to
Aurora and then on to Collingwood, Jacques and Hay made their first move
toward acquiring a large tract of timber la?-)d in Simcoe County. Their plans
were to establish a settlement called New Lowell - a name inspired by the
famous textile-m aking community of Lowell, ?4assachusetts - where they would
erect a sawmill to supply their rapidly expanding Toronto operations.
Robert Paton, a nephew of Hay, was sent to superintend the working of the
m ill.
At first, the Simcoe County operations did little more than supply
the Toronto factory with lumber; but after two disastrous fires had struck
the Front Street workshops — the first in December, 18£U, the second in
July, 1856^® — more and more of the making of chair parts was transferred
north. In order to co-ordinate the activities of the two factories, letters
were sent back and fo rth in large numbers. This correspondence, covering
the period lB$h to 1 8 7 3, has left us a unique record of early factory pro
duction of Canadian chairs.
The letters reveal that a wide range of fairly simple, inexpensive
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. chairs v?ere put together at Jacques and Hay’s Toronto factory from parts
cut out or turned in Simcoe County. "Common," "2 Slat" and "Cottage"
chairs are mentioned frequently and represent three of the most common
types of mid- to late-nineteenth-century chairs made in Ontario. "Common"
chairs, with backs composed of spindles three eighths of an inch in diameter
and simple bacic posts, called "pillars," turned at a cost of six-and-a-half
cents a hundred,^ were, in this instance, a late variation on the old
Windsor form (illu s . 27, 28, 30, 31). “2 Slat" chairs made by Jacques and
Hay had backs composed of two horizontal slats, referred to sometimes as
"chair backs," and measuring approximately three inches wide, top to bottom,
three quarters of an inch thick on the bottom edge and one-half inch thick
on the top.32 Illustration 70 shows a chair of a very common "2 Slat" type.
"Cottage" chairs made by the factory were something of a compromise between
the "Common" and "2 Slat" types, having backs composedof two horizontal
sla ts — or one s la t and a crest r a il — with spindles running from the rear
of the chair seat up to meet the lower slat (illus. 22, 62, 6$), The lower
s la t, which was slig h tly bowed, was made of rock elm or black ash and was
one-and-three-quarter inches wide, from top to bottom, and three quarters 13 of an inch thick.
Other types of seating furniture for v?hich parts were made were
"Painted cane seat chairs," office sto o ls,- ^ Boston rockers, dining 17 18 19 chairs, nurse chairs and children's chairs.
In making parts for all these, great care was taken to use the type
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission of wood best suited to the production of a sturdy and economical piece of
furniture. For added strength, parts were made of logs sawn with, rather 20 than across, the grain. Plank seats and frames for cane seats were made
of beech, birch, maple and sometimes basswood, one-and-three-quarter inches
thick. In cutting out pieces of wood to make back slats, densely grained
ash o r elm was used to produce a s la t which would be durable and could be
bent slightly for added comfort and a pleasing appearance. Maple was tried 21 but found to be too brittle. To make the legs and posts of a chair,
birch, beech, maple, rock elm and slippery elm, also known as swamp elm,
were used. For stretchers, however, rock elm was particularly desirable,
with birch second on the list of preferred woods, because of the need for 22 a straight-grained, quick-drying piece for this vital part. Legs could
be turned while green so that, after the chair was put together, they could
finish drying and, in the process, grasp more tightly the already dry
stretchers. Care had to be taken that the wood was not turned when it was
too green: in 186b, Jacques and Hay were given an order for from £0,000
to 1 0 0 ,0 0 0 broom handles of beech or maple, but found, when the order was
nearly completed, that one handle out of every five had begun to warp be-
cause it had been made of wood not seasoned for the proper length of time.23 J
A different kind of drying was needed to ensure that the slightly
bowed crest r a ils and sla ts used on so many of the chairs produced by the
factory would retain their shape before and after assembly. Thus a special
drying house was built at Hew Lowell, ten or twelve feet wide and divided
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 66
into ten compartments, five on each side of a central passageway. Its
roof was of board-snd-batten construction, while the ends and sides were
enclosed simply by rough boards. To help eliminate danpness, the floor of
the drying house was placed one foot above ground lev el. A stove, placed
at the center of the passageway inside, t?as lit during wet weather. ^
Pieces to bs dried there f i r s t were eith er boiled or steamed —
unless they were very green, when boiling and steaming would not be neces
sary — then bent by hand and wedged into position until dry. During clear
weather, the in i t i a l drying was done outdoors. 2 'C > I f not enough time were
allowed for tho drying process, the bent pieces of wood might spring back
to their original shape. Apparently this happened in November, 1867, when
some pieces bent at New Lowell arrived in Toronto perfectly straight after 26 they bad been removed too soon from th eir drying racks.
Finding skilled and reliable people to work at the bending and
drying process was often a problem. In 1867, a man with the very Irish
name of Paddy Kelly was given the job of bending and drying in addition to
his duties as watchman. Yet problems soon developed when i t was discovered
that Paddy's wife was doing some bending of her own — elbow bending — and 27 causing disturbances with her drunken behaviour. In l86h, it was suggested
that young boys might attend to the drying house at a cheap rate. 28
The turning of chair parts a t New Lowell seems to have got underway
in 1867 when two lathes and a turner were sent up by r a i l from the Toronto
shop. Soon after came a shipment of patterns, which could have been drawings
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6 7
or actual parts to be copied. That parts were copied is known by the fact
that in 1862 a Mr. Norman was sent from Toronto to New Lowell carrying with
him a chair leg and orders for a thousand more just like it. Parts for 29 beds also were turned in quantity a t the New Lowell workshop.
Again, however, finding, skilled workmen was a continual problem.
Wrote Jacques and Hay in desperation, "Mr. Dow /an overseer a t New Lowell/
must try and learn some of the Boys belonging to the village, if nothing 30 b e tte r can be done."
Parts invariably were ordered by the Toronto operation according to
a series of numbers, each number standing for a definite shape, size and
sty le. Great was the confusion when the numbers were mixed up or carelessly
exchanged for a name. When Robert Paton dared to inquire after "rocker
backs," he received the testy reply,
We wrote you by Mr. Dow desiring you to le t us know the number of the Turned Stuff you call Rocker backs as we do not know any thing but by the Number and can not find the stu ff you c a ll Rocker Backs....3T
Occasionally the wrong number was sent to the Toronto factory, resulting in
a shortage of one part 3nd a surplus of another. When this happened one day
in 1669* Jacques and Hay wrote,
Mr. Craig / one of the Toronto factory’s chief overseers/ is very much put about in consequence of sending him so very large a quantity of No 19 ana 17. Of 17 he has as much before this car arrived as will last him 2 years — and he states that they were not ordered and he is also much disappointed at not receiving more of No 13 & ill. The 8,1*00 of the one and the 10,000 of the other won't keep him going more than 10 or 12 D a y s .32
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The numbers mentioned — "8,h00 of the one" and "10,000 of the other" —
seem phenomenally large; yet in 1872, a fte r John Jacques had retired and
the firm was reorganized under the names R. Hay and Company in Toronto and
Hay and Paton in Hew Lowell, 33 the estimated amount of chair stuff required
by the Toronto operation for a period of just three months was a spectacular
226,000 pieces.Some of these pieces may well have been sold to other
makers. At le a s t one operation, E. KcGivern and Comnany of Hamilton, pre
viously had purchased a large quantity of spindles from the firm. The
spindles were made at Hew Lowell at a cost of half a cent each and sold for
double th at amount, one penny. ' There is no record of shipments to the
United States of chairs or chair parts, although pine lumber was sawn at
New Lowell for the United States market"^ and the Toronto firm continued to
do some importing of materials even when their Simcoe County mill was in
operation. S tretchers were imported from Rochester and other chair stu ff
was brought in from Burlington, Vermont . ^
Evidently Americans could s t i l l compete effectively in the Canadian
trade. Jacques and Kay were puzzled by the successes of their neighbors to
the south and mused, "It certainly is strange that we cannot get them /i7e.,
chair parts/ done as cheaply here as they are done on the other side."
Soon after, they had to admit, "We cannot make rocking chairs nearly so 3 S cheap as they do /~on_ 7 the other side."
One of the reasons for the firm's difficulties was its perennial
shortage of skilled and X’eliable workers. Shortly after the sawmill at New
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Lowell opened, i t was discovered th at not enough men could be found to
chop down the trees and employees of the m ill had to be sent out into the
forest. In a letter fraught with exasperation, the owners exclaimed, "We
never dreamed but that people could be got to supply the mill with logs
and certainly did not think th at the sawyers would have to go and chop down
the trees,... The result was that the New Lowell operation often lagged
behind in filling its orders from Toronto. When supplies ran out, frantic
messages sped up the tracks to Simcoe County: "Are we lik e ly to have any liO Scantling soon? There is a continual cry for bedsteads & none to give."
In a letter hinting of ulcers and high blood pressure vie read,
...Some of our men have been going idle all yesterday — and the man that makes the 2 slat chairs will be waiting on No lit Bent Stuff the day after tomorrow. For God's Sake...prevent us from running out as we have been la te ly .'1^-
Y/han supplies did come, they sometimes proved unsatisfactory. After a par
ticularly rough load of stretchers arrived in Toronto in May, 18£7, a great ) 0 many pieces had to be thrown away. Sometimes, when the p arts arrived and
were put together, the finished chairs just didn't look right and it v*as
discovered too late that the parts had not been made the right size.
To add to the firm's problems, the chair stuff sent often was not
dry enough. While turned and sawn chair parts did not have to go through
the careful drying process applied to the bent m aterials, parts which were
too green could not be used. Much of the chair stu ff which arrived from
New Lowell had to be spread out on the roof of the Toronto factory before
it was stored away inside, meaning that workmen had to be taken away from
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. their accustomed occupations to tend to the drying. The remedy suggested
was that two long storage sheds, the backs of which would be constructed of
narrow boards set one inch apart to allow for ventilation, be set up along
the railway siding at New I.owell. If the wooden parts did not dry rapidly,
they would become brittle and not fit for use.^
Other d iffic u ltie s encountered by the firm may have been precipitate
by the fact that its operations were so diversified. Unlike many large
American factories — the Rochester firm of Charles Robinson, for instance -
Jacques and Hay produced all types of furniture, from the simple chairs
supplied by their New Lowell operation to furniture “which, in point of [X elegance, w ill match any of the products of France or England." As the
leading cabinetmakers in the province, Jacques and Hay were given such
prestigious commissions as the fitting and furnishing of Osgoode Hall and
the new University of Toronto.^ The partners had many different irons in
many different fires.
The wood required for their more elegant chairs was black walnut,
which did not grow in any quantity up in Simcoe County. Once th eir early
source of supply, a stand of trees in the present Bathurst-Davenport Road
area of Toronto,^ was depleted, the firm was forced to go farther afield,
to the rich walnut groves of the southwestern part of the province. In the
summer of 1863, Jacques and Hay received 173,636 feet of walnut shipped
along the north shore of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario from the port of Rondeau
With the exception of hall chairs, most of the more fashionable
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission 7 1
■walnut seating furniture had to be upholstered — and this required special
skills and equipment. Thus a "hair factory" grew to be a major subsidiary
operation at New Lowell. It seems to have got its start in i860 when a
to ta l of 17>9h3 c a ttle ta ils and manes, 1^1 pounds of c a ttle h a ir, 116 pounds
of horse hair, 101 pounds of "old hair" and 83? pounds of hog h air were sent li9 by r a il from Toronto. At New Lowell, the hair was washed, dyed and pre
pared for shipment to the c ity where i t would be used as stuffing for up
holstered fu rn itu re. The hog hair was the most d iff ic u lt to work with since
i t required a very thorough washing before i t could be used — and even then
some customers might complain of an objectionable odor emanating from their
upholstered chairs if too much of it were employed. It first had to be
cleaned with water and strong lye soap, then dyed and boiled in water mixed
with chlorine. After th is , i t was dyed a second tim e .^ Horse and c a ttle
hair also required dying in order to achieve a uniform black color. It is
not known whether any of this prepared hair ever was woven into haircloth
or if that ubiquitous upholstery material was imported from the large hair
cloth factories of England and the United States. Some of the hair itself
had to be brought in from Montreal.^ In times of shortage, in the early
1 8 7 0's, experiments were conducted with lisle, a particularly strong type c?2 of cotton thread, coir fiber obtained from coconut shells and an uniden
tifie d "Cochin Fiber"*^ and "Mexican Fiber,possibly hemp.
To look after their large trade, Jacques and Hay required large
buildings, large amounts of machinery and large numbers of workmen. In
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 72
1855, after a major fire had destroyed their Front Street premises, a
large new factory — the largest in Canada — was constructed and said to
rival in size even the gigantic Chickering works in Boston. Within a year,
that factory too burned, causing a total loss of ^31,000 and about U 00 jobs.
So vital was Jacques 3nd Hay's operation to the economic health of the c ity
that Mayor John Beverly Robinson and his council offered a ^2!?,000 loan.
The partners refused this assistance, however, rebuilt their factory and
prospered as never before.^ The firm continued, with some changes in
management when John Jacques retired in 1870, u n til Robert Hay himself re-
tii'ed, about 1 8 8 5 . ^
No other furniture makers in the province could equal the scale or
the success of the Jacques and Hay operation. Yet the commercial prosperity
of the l 8£>0 's and ' 6 0's saw the establishment of other factories which,
while smaller, still could claim a market of their own. Chief among the
smaller factories was that of G. P. Walter and Company in Bowmanville.
Abo.ut the year 1861, G. P. Walter purchased the Upper Canada
Furniture Company, on Elgin S treet, from a Mr. John D. F e e .^ Bowmanville,
located near the shore of Lake Ontario, some forty miles east of Toronto,
had access both to good transportation, by rail and by water, and to a large
and prospering market along the north shore of Lake Ontario. By 1863, the
firm claimed to produce all types of cabinet furniture "from the cheaper to
the higher class." According to the Illustrated Canadian News, however,
Their principle, business...is in the manufacture of caneseat chairs, which have hitherto been imported in large quantities,
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 73
from the United States; they make a greater variety of this class of goods than is made elsewhere in Canada, and fully compete with the American manufactures; th eir prices for th is class of goods are as low as they are sold for in the United States, thereby saving the import duty of 20 per cent to the dealers who buy from this firm. There is on an average, seventy hands employed in th is factory, a portion of whom- are g irls, who have been introduced to plait the cane in the chair seats and backs. The girls work at their own houses, the work being sent out to them, and brought back when finished. The Proprietors themselves being practical working men, the works are carried on under th e ir own immediate supervision, and the system of labour is such th at a ll hands employed work to advantage. In the chair department each man has his part to do; a chair having to pass through six different hands before being completed. In the three story building the vjood work is done, the first floor being devoted to cutting out the stuff, &c., /wjhere are found planors, turning lathes, saws of various kinds, , &c. On the second floor the cabinet work is made. The third flo o r is used solely for making cane seat chairs; here a great v ariety of machinery is employed to great advantage, a l l of which is of the best description. All chairs before leaving this room are stamped with the name of the firm. The machinery is driven by steam power, the rooms, dry house, glue pots, &c., being heated by the exhaust steam from the engine. The two story building is used for finishing and chair painting. The other buildings are used as store house, office, &c., &c. By special- arrangement with the Grand Trunk Railway Company, they are enabled to send their goods at a low rate of freight.3°
Unlike Jacques and Hay, G. P. Walter and Company marked th e ir chairs.
Numerous examples with an impressed "G. P. WALTER & CO. / BOWMANVILLE, C. W."
still may be found in Ontario (illus. 32 to 36). Whether the firm marked
all their chairs is not known. Certainly there are many chairs to be seen
today which are very similar, or even identical, to marked Walter chairs
but cannot firmly be attrib u ted to th is Bowmanville firm. The mystery
deepens when we find chairs such a3 that shown in illustration 3l } marked
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7U
by the Heywood Chair Manufacturing Company of Gardner, Massachusetts, but
identical in every respect to a chair-marked by Walter (illus. 52). Either
there was direct commercial contact between these two firms or one of them
dismantled a chair made by the other and-copied it line for line. Or per
haps both were copiers. Copying successful designs by others was a common
ploy among furniture makers in the days when only mechanical devices or tech
niques, not designs, could be patented.
Unfortunately few "high style" pieces by G. P. Walter ever were
marked a t a l l . I t is known, however, th at the firm made a large quantity
of furniture for the Gothic-Revival "Trafalgar Castle" of Nelson Gilbert
Reynolds, sheriff of Ontario County.^ The castle was built on the out
skirts of Whitby in 1859 and stands today as the Ontario Ladies College.
Among those pieces attributab3.e to the Bowmanville firm are three sets of
oak h a ll chairs (illu s . 57 to 6 0), one of which is distinguished by its
tall finials and applied carvings of a "stag lodged" inspired, perhaps, by
the Reynolds family cre st.
Wood used by”the factory probably came from several different
sources. Rondeau in southwestern Ontario was one of them. In the summer
of 1863. 3b , 097 feet of "white wood" (probably largely basswood). left that
port on Lake Erie for G. P. Walter and Company in Bowmanville.^*
Work at the factory came to an abrupt end in 1866, when fire, that
ever-present danger to the woodworker's shop, severely damaged the company's
buildings. Walter himself was totally disheartened at the loss and died
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. just a few months later. The factory was rebuilt, however, and managed by
a Mr. Johnson, F. F. McArthur and W. P. Prower u n til i t closed altogether
about 1890.^- With G. P. Walter gone, the firm changed its name to the
Bowmanville Furniture Manufacturing Company and continued to produce chairs.
As in the days of its founder, a wide variety of styles was produced, from
simple, plank-seated chairs (illus. 6 2 ) to upholstered chairs of an ambitious
Renaissance Revival design (illus. 6I4 ).
During the years 1868 and 1869, th is new Bowmanville firm did busi
ness with John Gibbard and his chair- and cabinetmaking establishment in
Napanee, roughly one hundred miles to the east. Surviving Gibbard account
books show th at the two were in regular contact with each other; although
the sorts of furniture, or furniture parts, they exchanged almost never
were specified.
Since late in the eighteenth century, the settlement on the Napanee
River had been an important regional trading center. A mill had been built
in Napanee in the eighteenth century and, i t is said, Windsor chairs were
made there as early as 1?89.^ It was in the year 183£ that John Gibbard
came to the village and set up his cabinetmaking shop. Soon after, he
acquired a water-powered sawmill and began manufacturing furniture, doors,
sash, coffins and fanning mills on a small scale. In I 86I1, the original
factory burned; but by 1868, Gibbard was back in business on a larger scale
and in partnership with his son, W. T. Gibbard. Three years later, the
making of doors and sash was discontinued and John Gibbard and Son began
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. devoting more and more of th e ir energy to making furniture. After many ups
and downs, the firm remains in business today, the oldest furniture-making
establishment in Canada. Its present factory is composed of sixteen sepa
rate buildings and additions built one against the other, a striking witness
to the growth of factory production.^
From surviving account books of John Gibbard and Son for the years
1868 to 1879 come numerous references to the sale of a wide variety of
chairs and other furniture. Boston rockers, nursing rockers, children's
rockers, "common" rockers, office chairs, Windsor chairs, "scroll-seat
chairs,1' cane-seat chairs, sewing chairs, high chairs, "straight-back
chairs," "bent-back chairs," dining chairs, "New York Easy chairs," "New
York Rockers" and French chairs® were sold in quantity. The simple
"straight-back chairs" could be had for thirtjr-seven-and-a-half cents
apiece when ordered in quantity, while "New York Easy chairs," the top of
the lin e , commanded a price of $17.00 e a c h .^ They, like the "New York
Rockers," might have been imported from the United States, although the
name "New York" may simply have been a lure for the fashion-conscious
buyer. What these "New York" chairs looked like is impossible to say. Nor
do we have any better idea of what "3 French" chairs were lik e — although
that term, along with "Full French," had been in use in the province at
least thirty years before.^ In all probability, they were chairs of one
of the French revival styles characterized by cabriole legs and curving
backs, seats and arm supports. "Full French" chairs may have been covered
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. entirely -with upholstery (illus. 65), while "y French” chairs may have had
upholstery on the seat alone (illus. 66).
Frequently the Gibbard operation served as a supplier for other
makers and retailers. Abram Southard of Picton, Prince Edward Counts1-, was
a valued customer and purchased in one order, on A pril 28, 1869, twenty-four
straight-backs at thirty-seven-and-a-half cents each, three children's
chairs at fifty cents each, one nursing rocker at $1.10, one office chair
at $1.75, six bedsteads at $13.00 and a bundle of "rings,” possibly wooden
curtain rings, st thirty cents. On another occasion, Southard purchased a
total of two hundred spindles from Gibbard for $3.00, suggesting that he ft 7 put together chairs from p arts made a t Napanee. 1
Like many other similar establishments of the day, John Gibbard
and Son devoted a considerable amount of time to providing coffins, shrouds
and undertaking facilities. The combination of furniture making and funeral
arranging was a common one in small communities where the s k ills of the same
woodworker produced both cradle and coffin. The Gibbards showed th e ir small
town manners in other ways too: in all their records there is mention only
of pine, walnut, basswood, elm and other native woods. Veneers of rosewood
or mahogany for U3e on highly fashionable furniture are not to be found.
Only a very few identifiable Gibbard pieces are known today, one
of them being the painted and stencilled chair shown in illustration 67.
In January, 1876, John Gibbard and Son could estimate the value of 68 the machinery in their Napanee factory at $5,200.00. Yet the type of
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. machinery th e ir factory employed is not known. Thirteen years before,
G. P. Walter and Company had used mechanized "planors," lathes and saws
and "a great v ariety of Machinery" in the part of th e ir factory where cane-
seated chairs were made. Steam power ran th eir machinery and heated th e ir
buildings.^ Some ten years before that, in the early l850's, William
Chambers had noted in the Toronto factory of Jacques and Hay "remarkably
ingenious machinery for planing, turning, morticing and effecting other
purposes in carpentry for which the United St3tes have gained such deserved
celebrity," but suggested that even in the largest furniture factory in the
province, mechanization had not reached the advanced level it enjoyed in
such American c itie s as C incinnati. 70 In comparison with th e ir American
neighbors,.Jacques and Hay, and probably other Canadian furniture makers as
w ell, were rath er slow to mechanize. In 1857, the New Lowell operation of
the Toronto firm employed two circular saws for cutting timber; but it was
not until after a fire had swept through the building, when the firm consi
dered purchasing a new circular saw rig from Erie, Pennsylvania, that the
Simcoe County m ill could hope for "a good Rig a t la s t." Up u n til 1870, the
mill was just beginning to experiment with steam-powered machinery, although 71 steam had been used to heat and power the Toronto shop for some tim e.'
By the mid-nineteenth century, it was generally conceded that United
States machinery was superior to any other in virtually every branch of
woodworking: a l l p ra c tica l adaptations of the circu lar saw, band saw and
planing, boring, lathing and shaping machines had come from the United S tates.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Yet even thei*e, mechanization of the furniture industry progressed a t a
fairly slow pace. As late as 1870 an important proportion of the total
U. S. furniture output came from relatively small shops without steam power 73 and a high degree of mechanization.
Even without steam and machines, however, chairmaking was the f i r s t
segment of the furniture industry to adopt techniques of mass production.
As early as 1725, the beech forests of Buckinghamshire, England, were alive
with chairmakers and turners, many of them working in the open air, pro
ducing large numbers of Windsor chairs and chair parts with the simplest of V} tools. In America, mass production of chairs began with the fancy chair 75 industry in Pittsburgh early in the nineteenth century. All this took
place without elaborate machinery. In fact, patent records indicate that
most specialized devices for use in chairmaking did not appear until the
l860's and *70*s. Only a few had been patented before that time — a
^chair-manufacturing machine" in 1830, a machine for boring and morticing
chair seats in l8h0, and a seat-dressing machine in I8h8 — although some
of these may have been in use, without a patent, some years before. Of
them, the boring 8nd morticing machine probably had the greatest effect
on the chairmaking industry; for by eliminating the tedious process of
making holes in chair seats by hand, it made way for mass production of
the cane-seated chair, a nineteenth-century favorite.
While Upper Canada did lag behind some areas of the United States
in mass production of chairs until after the mid-nineteenth century, the
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. reason for this lag can be attributed less to a lack of machinery than to
the province's relatively small population, poor internal transportation
facilities, inability to utilize its forest resources and the ease with
which manufactured items could be brought in from the already industria
lizing areas along the southern shores of the Great Lakes and the St.
Lavjrence. Even when factory production did arriv e, in the 18$0'sf smaller
workshops continued, as they did in the United States, to supply the needs
of local markets until late in the century.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Footnotes
1. J. M. S. Careless, The Union of the Canadas (Toronto, 196?), pp. 132-1 b9.
2. Michael S . Cross, "The Lumbering Community of Upper Canada," Ontario History, 52 (i960), 213-233.
3. Ib id ., p. 220
b. C. Blackett Robinson, History of Toronto and the County of York, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1883), I, 85-86.
5. Sheila M. Smith, Jacques and Hay CabinetmaIters 1835-1885, T3, Canadiana Department, Royal Ontario Museum, p. 2.
6. Barrie Examiner, July 31, 1890.
7. Toronto Assessment Records, St. George's Ward, 1837, Toronto City Hall.
8. Toronto Customs House Manifests, l836-l8bl, PAOj Toronto Customs Register, I6b3~l8b9, PAG, R. G. 16, A5-3, Vol. 2.
9. William Chambers, Things As They Are in America (London and Edinburgh, 18510, p. 115.
10. Sheila M. Smith, op. cit., pp. 8, 12.
11. Correspondence, Jacoues and Hay to Robert Paton, ?iay 22, 1857 and Dec. 2, 1857, Simcoe County Archives (cited hereafter as SCA). In a le tte r dated Sept. 2b, 1858, from Jacques and Hay to Robert Paton (SCA), is the statement, "...We require b chair legs for every 2 ch3ir Pillars," indicating that "Pillars" refer to back posts of Windsor-type chairs.
12. Correspondence, same to same, May h, 1857 and Sept. 9, 1857, SCA.
13. Correspondence, same to same, Dec. b, 1855 and July 27, 1866, SCA.
lb. Correspondence, same to same, Aug. 3, 1857,.SCA.
15. Correspondence, same to same, Dec. 2, 1857, SCA.
16. Correspondence, same to same, June 3.8, 1861, SCA.
17. Correspondence, same to same, Aug. 29, 1863, SCA.
81
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 82 CO (H
« Correspondence, same to same, Nov. 3, 1863, SCA.
19. Correspondence, same to same, Jan. 7, 1871, SCA.
2 0 . Correspondence, same to same, Mar. 20,r 1857 and Sept. 2, 1857, SCA.
2 1 . Correspondence, same to same, Dec. a , 1855 and Feb. 11, 1870, SCA. CM CM
• Correspondence, same to same, Feb. I86hj April 16, 1866 and Feb. 11, 1870, SCA.
23. Correspondence, same to same, Feb. 8, 186U and June 20, l86b, SCA.
2U. Correspondence, same to same, Mar. 26, 1857, SCA.
25. The actual bending process is not described in the Jacques and Hay- correspondence. A good, illustrated account of the process may be found, however, iri Ivan Sparkes, The English Country Chair (Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, 1973), pp. 37-3B.
26. Correspondence, Jacques and Hay to Robert Paton, Nov. 10, 1857, SCA.
27. Correspondence, same to same, Mar. 26, 1857 and April li, 1857, SCA.
28. Correspondence, same to same, Feb. 1, I86I4 , SCA.
29. Corresoondence, same to same, Mar. 2, 1857 j Mar. 12, 1857 5 A pril 23, 1857 and July 7, 1862, SCA.
30. Correspondence, same to same, June 1, 186U, SCA.
31. Correspondence, same to same, May lh» 1857, SCA.
32. Correspondence, same to same, Sept. 23, 1869, SCA.
33. Correspondence, Robert Hay to Robert Paton, Feb. 1, 1871, SCA.
3)-i. Correspondence, same to same, Dec. 12, 1872, SCA.
35. Correspondence, Jacques and Hay to Robert Paton, Aug. 19, 1857, SCA.
36. Correspondence, same to same, Dec. 11, 1863, SCA.
37. Correspondence, same to same, June 30, 1857, SCA.
38. Correspondence, same to same, Dec. 2, 1857 and Feb. 1, 1858, SCA.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8 3
39. Correspondence, same to same, July 12, 1855, SCA.
bO. Correspondence, same to same, June 2h, 1856, SCA.
111. Correspondence, same to same, Sept. 9, 1857, SCA.
112. Correspondence, same to same, May 28, 1857, SCA.
113. Correspondence, same to same, June 1, 1857, SCA.
ilii. Correspondence, same to same, May 28, 1858, SCA.
Ii5. William Chambers, op. cit., p. 115.
U6. Correspondence, Jacques and Hay to Robert Paton,June 28, 1859, SCA.
h7. Sheila Smith, op. cit., p. 21.
1|8. Rondeau Port Records, Records of Ships Cleared Outwards, 1863, PAC, R. G. 16, A5-2h, Vol. 1.
Ij9. Correspondence, Jacques and Hay to Robert Paton, July 16, i860,SCA.
50. Correspondence, same to. same, Sept. 22, 1863, SCA.
51. Correspondence, Robert Hay to Robert Paton, Aug. 2, 1873, SCA
52. Correspondence, Jacques and Hay to Robert Paton, Mar. lU, 1870, SCA.
53. Correspondence, Robert Hay to Robert Paton, Sept. 19, 1871, SCA.
5h. Correspondence, same to same, Aug. 2, 1873, SCA.
55. Sheila Smith, op. cit., pp. 8-20.
56. Barrie Examiner, July 31, 1890.
57. David R. Morrison e t a1 ., Bovrmanville ARetrospect (Bowmanville, 1958), p. 71.
58. Quoted in Jeanne Minhinnick, A_t Home in Upper Canada (Toronto and Vancouver, 1970), p. 195.
59. Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8U
60. Rondeau Port Records, Recordsof Ships ClearedOutwards, 1863, PAC, R. G. 16, A5-2U, Vol. 1.
61. David R. Morrison et al., loc. cit.
62. John Gibbard and Son, Account Books, 3 v o ls., TCRL, I , 69,. 86, 98, 118, 126, 163, 168, 229, 263, 316.
63. A Windsor chair currently exhibited at Fort York, Toronto, is said to have been made in Napanee in 1789 (par private correspondence with James Hunter, Toronto H istorical Board, Aug. 22, 197k).
6h. “The Gibbard Furniture Shops Limited: 100 Years of Excellence," undated article reprinted from Furniture World by the Gibbard Furniture Shops Ltd., Napanee.
63. John Gibbard and Son, Account Books, I , 29, 113, 133, l6 l, 162, 236, 398, ho6, b68, 613.
66. See advertisement for P. J. and P. O'Neill, Toronto, in The Examiner, June lb, lSb3.
67. John Gibbard and Son, Account Books, I, 236, b06. Other orders from Southard appear on pages 287 and Ii92 of the same volume. Illustrations of furniture with Southard's label attached and data on Southard's lif e and work may be found in Jeanne Minhinnick, op. c i t ., pp. 208-21U.
68. John Gibbard and Son, Account Books, I I , 1.
6 9. See Jeanne Minhinnick, op. cit., p. 193«
70. William Chambers, op. c i t . , p. 113.
71. Correspondence, Jacques and Hay to Robert Paton, Jan. 28, 1837 and Feb. 19, 1870, and Robert Hay to Robert Paton, Oct. 26, 1872 and Nov. 23, 1872, SCA.
72. Nathan Rosenberg, comp., The American System of Manufactures (1833; rp t. Edinburgh, 1969), pp. 16, 171, 29b, 3bU.
73. Polly Anne Earl, "Craftsmen and Machines: The Nineteenth Century Furniture Industry," in Technological Innovation and the Decorative Arts, Winterthur Conference Report 1973, ed. Ian K. G. Quimby and Polly Anne Earl (Charlottesville, Va., 197b), p. 316.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8S
7h. Ivan Sparkes, op. cit., p. 21.
7£. Emilie Rich Underhill, "Our Fancy Ch3irs Adopt .Sheraton D etails," in The Ornamented Chair I ts Development in America (1700-1890)( ed.Zilla Rider Lea~TRutland, Vt., 19b0), p. 39-
76. United States Patent Office, Subject-Matter Index of Patents for Inventions Issued by the United States Patent Office from 1790 to i873~~inclusive, comp. D. M. Leggett, 3 vols. IWashington,’T87lil, I , 2&L-281IT
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER V
Contacts With the United States and Other Aspects of Chairmaking in the l850’s and ’60's
Even as late as 1857 and 1858, when factory production of chairs
was well underway in Upper Canada, Jacques and Hay were forced to admit
that American factories could make chairs and chair parts more cheaply than
they."*" In 1856, Alexander Lawrie of London, about 150 miles west of Toronto,
claimed that "three-fourths of the Cabinet Work sold in this city is im
ported from the United States...and still the supply does not equal the
demand." The f i r s t years of large-scale production of chairs and other
furniture in the province were years of continuing competition with United
States manufacturers.
Among the competitors were J. M. Wright and Company, latecomers to
the furniture trade, who set up their factory in Oswego, New York,in 185b.
In an advertisement dated June 9, 1855, the firm introduced itself to poten
ti a l Canadian customers as "manufacturers & dea3.ers in CABINET FURNITURE,
and CHAIRS & BEDSTEADS, Looking-Glasses, and Looking-Glass Plates, Gilt
Frames, &c, &c."^ The following year, the firm expanded and built a new
building to contain "machinery.. .of the most modern kind" driven by an
eighty-horse-power steam engine. There were manufactured "chairs exclu
sively, including all varieties of wood and cane seat work." The factory’s
products, number5.ng up to 150,000 chairs per year, were sold largely to
86
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Canadian and western United States markets."*
In May, 1857, the company was incorporated as the Oswego Chair
Factory with a capital stock of $30,000.00 divided into 600 shares.^
After suffering some financial losses during the "panic of 1857," the
company continued to prosper, giving employment by 1859 to 325 men and
boys. Much of the firm’s production at this time consisted of "Knock Down"
work — th a t is , chair parts which could easily be packed and shipped and
then assembled at their final destination. Oswego Chair Factory chairs
were put together without glue, then painted or finished, taken apart again
and packed in boxes containing one dozen chairs each. One of‘the factory's
most notable features was its "bending machine" which eliminated much hand
labor and produced pieces of bent wood not only for back slats, but for 7 seat frames as well. The extent to which these and other Oswego Chair
Factory chairs entered Upper Canada may never e n tire ly be known; fo r the
factory seems not to have marked its products. There is , however, a chair
( illu s . 6 9) in the Matheson House museum in Perth, d ire c tly across the Lake
and north from Oswego, which may be a ttrib u te d to the firm on the basis of
its strong similarity to a round-seated chair from an Oswego Chair Factory O advertisement.
Like the Charles Robinson Company of Rochester, the Oswego factory
employed institutional labor. Convicts at the Onondaga County Penitentiary 9 in Syracuse were put to work making cane seats.
Across the Lake, in Upper Canada, similar use of convict labor was
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission 88
made by manufacturers and entrepreneurs. In I8b9, John Stevenson of
Napanee and William Stevenson o f Auburn, New York, entered into a fiv e-
year contract with the governors of the Provincial Penitentiary at Kingston
to give employment in cabinetmaking to fifty inmates at the rate of Is 6d
per day for each man employed.‘L0 Th9 employers agreed to supply the neces
sary tools and by 1850 had set up twenty-one fully equipped cabinetmaker’s
benches inside the prison walls.'*"*' In 1855, the Stevensons’ contract was
allowed to lapse in favor of an agreement with one Peter Todd who agreed
to pay an extra shilling per day for each of his fifty to sixty-five
laborers.
Cabinetmaking was believed by prison officials to be the most lucra
tive occupation that convicts could be engaged in. The idea of entering
into agreements with fu rn itu re makers had come to Kingston from the United
States, where cabinetmaking was considered "the best-paying contract in the
Prisons of the State of New York." In i860, it was claimed that the Pro
vincial Penitentiary held "a number of the best tradesmen the country can
produce""^ — hardly a compliment to the character of Upper Canadian wood
workers! Yet their work often was of high quality. In 1856, Morton’s
Penitentiary Cabinet Manufactory in Kingston — evidently a subcontractor
employing prison labor — claimed first prize for "6 dining room chairs"
and third prize for an "easy arm chair" shown at the Provincial Exhibition
that year,^ Also in 1856, the Toronto agent for penitentiary-made furni
ture offered his customers "a large stock of Choice Furniture, of the best
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 89
m aterials and manufacture.Those prisoners who had worked as furniture
makers before th eir conviction were used to d irect and train the other con
v i c t s . ^ In 1855, several professional woodworkers were liste d on the p r i
son ro lls . One of them, Alexander Lang, was a chairmaker from the United 17 States who had been convicted of larceny in Wellington County.
Unfortunately very few pieces of furniture can be traced back
today to the prison workshops of New York State or Upper Canada. The
arrowback sidechair shown in illustration 26 may possibly have been the
product of convict labor since it bears the label of Colonel E. Buell's
cabinet and chair factory at Brockville. William Buell, of the same family,
is known to have been involved in contract negotiations with the Provincial 1 ft Penitentiary, although the full nature of his involvement is not clear.
Because prison labor was cheap and carefully controlled, peniten
tiary-made furniture was probably less expensive than that which many inde
pendent cabinetmakers or factories could produce by themselves. Its re- 19 tailers often advertised its low price together with its high quality.
In the l850's, Upper Canadian furniture makers who were unable to contract
for prison labor had not only United States competitors to deal with, but
competition from the Penitentiary workshops as well.
S till another source of competition arose when the railway was
completed to Montreal — with 57,000 inhabitants, according to the 1851-52
census, the metropolis of the Canadas. Almost as soon as the tracks were
laid, in the mid-'50's, Montreal furniture-making firms began to advertise
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. in western newspapers. In Toronto, in June, 1855, T. M. Todden drew
attention to his stock of "SINGLE, Double and Folding Iron Bedsteads, Iron
Cribs, Cots, Couches, Chairs, & c...." while S. W. Abbot and Company announced
their "extensive stock of NEW AND FASHIONABLE FURNITURE and HOUSE FURNISHING 20 GOODS" and "Cottage, Office, Dining and common chairs." Just how much
furniture actually arrived from Montreal is impossible to say since no
commercial b arriers which would have required record keeping existed between
Canada East and Canada West. In all likelihood, Montreal furniture would
have found its largest markets in the easternmost parts of the province
where freight charges from the city were small.
Probably the most significant development of the l850, s and '60*3,
as far as Canadian furniture makers were concerned, was not in the realm of
new sources of competition, but in the enactment of new, protective tariff
0*1 laws in 1858 and '59. Such laws were what Upper Canadian woodworkers had
petitioned for back in the l830's; yet only with increased population and
wealth, improvements of Drovincial transportation fa c ilitie s and the atten
dant rise of lumbering and domestic factory production could higher duties
on American manufactured items have been a good thing for the majority of
Upper Canadians. It was not until the late l850's that the colony possessed
the means to look after its own manufacturing needs.
The increase in the tariff had a dramatic effect on Canadian trade.
While in the year 1855, Canada had purchased $935,176.00 worth of merchandise
from the city of Buffalo, in 1858 her total imports from that city were
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 91
valued at only $71b,502.00. The decline in value of Canadian imports in
18^8 alone was $152,207.00. On the other hand, Canada had increased her
exports, consisting primarily of lumber and agricultural products, to
Buffalo that year by $313,206.00. While Canadian importation of household
furniture from Buffalo was valued at $22,715.00 in 1858, by i860 it had
declined to only $12,08k.OO. For the f ir s t time in history, Canada's ex- 22 ports exceeded her imports in total value.
This abrupt decline in importation was reflected also in customs
records from the city of Hamilton for the years 1858 to 1861. Between
March 1st and December 28th, 1858, fifty separate lots of furniture came
into port from the United States. During the whole of 1859, however, only
thirty-eight lots are recorded; while the following year, only fifteen lots 23 of household furniture appeared. The time when Upper Canadians relied
heavily on American manufacturers of chairs and chair parts had come to an
end. By l86h, an account of the Oswego Chair Factory mentioned markets for
Oswego chairs in New York and the western United*' States alone. 2 k
The i860's marked the coming of age of B ritish North America.
Economically, the provinces began to stand on their own two feet. Politi
cally, they gained increased control over their own affairs and, with
Confederation in 1867, began to project th eir dreams and ambitions across
the continent. In the years since the Constitutional Act of 1791 had
carved the province of Upper Canada from the old colony of Quebec, chair-
makers and woodworkers of all sorts ceased to be lonely practitioners of
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. their trade, ■working for small groups of customers in backwoods settlements.
While many continued their independent existence for decades to come, others
found steadier employment in factories in growing towns and c itie s . Whether
following the old ways or the new, their lives were neither entirely heroic
nor wholly commonplace. Their work was neither consistently great nor
always ordinary. They were men of business as well as art.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Footnotes
1. Correspondence, Jacques and Hay to Robert Paton, Dec. 2, 1857 and Feb. l ‘ 18£8, SCA.
2. The Globe (Toronto), Oct. 22, 1856.
3. Cabinet Makers, Chair Makers, and Furniture Dealers in Oswego County From 1800 through"1875, TS, Oswego County H istorical Society, Oswego, New York. In this study, J. Milton Wright is noted as being listed as a "Furniture dealer” in an 1852-53 Oswego directory. In 185U-55, "Wright & Co." are listed at 68 East First Street.
1*. The Globe, May 19, 1856.
5. The Oswego City Residence & Advertising Directory for 1857 (Oswego, 1857), p. 2 8 .
6. Photocopy of Incorporation certificate of the Oswego Chair Factory, filed May 15, 1857, Oswego County Historical Society.
7. The Oswego City Residence and Advertising Directory for 1859 (Oswego, 1859), pp. 30-31.
8. See Directory of the City of Oswego for 1861* and 1865, comp. John Fitzgerald (Oswego, l86l*), illu s . p. 238. This would seem to be a careful rendering of one of the factory's chairs rather than a standard typesetter's cut.
9. The Oswego City Residence & Advertising Directory for 1857, p. 28 and The Oswego City Residence and Advertising Directory for 1859, p. 30.
10. "Provincial Penitentiary Annual Accounts, for 181*9," in Appendix to the Ninth Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada (Toronto, 185077 n. pag., PAC.
11. "Provincial Penitentiary Annual Accounts for 1850," in Appendix to the Tenth Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada (Toronto, l85l77 n. pag., PAC
12. Legislative Assembly, Journals, 185U-1855, Vol. 13, Appendix D. D., n. pag., PAC.
13. Legislative Assembly, Journals, i860, Vol. 18, Sessional Papers No. 32, n. pag.,- PAC
93
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lb. Directory of the City of Kingston, for 1857-1858, comp. Thomas Flynn (Kingston, 1857), p. 273.
15. The Globe, Oct. 22, 1856.
16. Legislative Assembly, Journals, i860, loc. c it.
17. Legislative Assembly, Journals, 1856, Vol. lb, Appendix 10, n. pag., PAC.
18. Correspondence, D. A. MacDonnell, Warden, Provincial Penitentiary, Kingston, to William Buell, Brockville, Jan. 23, 1855, A. N. Buell Papers, PAO.
19. See, for instance, the advertisement of the agent, W. Storror of Toronto, in The Globe, Oct. 22, 1856.
20. The Globe, June 5, 1855 and June 16, 1855.
21. See J . M. S. Careless, The Union of the Canadas (Toronto, 1967), p. lU5.
22. The Commercial A dvertiser' s Twenty-First Annual Statement of the Trade and Commerce of Buffalo, For l858 (Buffalo, 1859), pp. 35-55 and The Commercial A dvertiser's Twenty-Second Annual Statement of the Trade and Commerce of Buffalo, For 1860 (Buffalo, I86l), pp. 3k~3^7
23. Hamilton Customs Returns, 1858-1861, PAC, R. G. 16, A5-65. Pages are missing between the dates July 15 and Aug. 1, 1859, and April 7 and April 12, 1860.
2b. Directory of the City of Oswego for l86b and 1865, p. 23.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ILLUSTRATIONS
95
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The Illustrations have been chosen in order to complement the
written text of this study of chairs and chairmaking in Upper Canada.
Some are referred to directly in the text, while others have been included
to introduce the work of chairmakers not previously mentioned or to suggest
stylistic trends and variations which are difficult to deal with by word
alone. They have been arranged in an order roughly corresponding to the
order of the development of themes and ideas in the text.
Care has been taken to illustrate representative types of chairs
made or used by Upper Canadians, yet not all the chairs shown can be said
to be "typical." Chairs with a known maker are, in fact, rare, although
about a third of the chairs shown here may be attributed to a specific
maker or factory.
In the captions accompanying the illustrations of chairs, each
chair first is classified according to type. Wherever possible, nineteenth-
century terminology, which would have been familiar to the chair's maker or
original owners, has been used. Then comes the name of its maker, if known,
its likely place of origin (using current place names), its approximate
date and its measurements. The height of a chair is taken to be its maxi
mum height from the top of its back to the floor. Its width and depth are
the measurements of its seat. Following this data, the owners and present
location of the chair are identified. A brief commentary, with references
to condition, history, style and other relevant information, accompanies
each illustration. Woods used in making the chairs have been named only
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when their identification by sight is unmistakable. Microscopic analysis
of samples has not been done since only in very rare cases could the infor
mation obtained by this analysis assist us in attributing a chair to a
specific maker or area.
Except in those instances where illustrations are acknowledged as
being obtained through the courtesy of the Canadians Department of the
Royal Ontario Museum or the Public Archives of Ontario, the photography is
my own. To those individuals and organizations who allowed me to disrupt
their lives with camera and tripod, thank you!
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1. Brace-back Windsor side chair Ontario or New England Last quarter, 18th century H. 36 3/U" W. 16" D. 1?" Century Village, Lang, Ontario.
This chair strongly resembles brace-back Windsors made in New England during the second half of the eighteenth century and which may have entered Upper Canada among the nersonal effects of Loyalist settlers. Daniel Tiers advertised "brace-back chairs" in York in January, 1802.1 Its present finish, white and light green paint, is not original.
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2. Windsor side chair Probably Ontario First half, 19th century H. 39|" w- 12f" D. 1 3 !" Century Village, Lang, Ontario.
This chair has a ll the essential features of Windsor construction: a solid wooden seat with splayed legs and back spindles fixed to the seat by dowel joints. It would seem to be the product of an amateur wo?king without elaborate tools or a lathe. The present finish of dark red paint reproduces the original.
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3. Open-back side chair Ontario or Quebec c. 1790-1825 H. 32" W. IUt" 0. H~" York Pioneer and Historical Society, Sharon Temple Museum, Sharon, Ontario
This chair, according to tradition, was made by a member of the Webb family, early s e ttle rs in King Township, York County. Of simple construction, it closely resembles the open-backed "lie d'Orleans'' type of chair found in Quebec. Like many Quebec chairs, its horizontal members are doweled or morticed through its front legs and rear stiles.^ In its present con ditio n , rough pieces of wood have been nailed below the stretchers and seat rungs. Its side stretchers are missing. The very coarse rush seat is early and perhaps original to the chair.
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li. Ladderback armchair Ontario or Quebec c. 1790-1825 H. h3§" W. 21'' D. 17" Courtesy Canadians Department, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto,
Like the chair shown in illustration 3, this ladderback arm chair is constructed in such a way that its horizontal slats and splindles are doweled or morticed through its front legs and rear stiles in the manner of many Quebec chairs. Its seat, of tongue-and-groove boards, probably replaces an earlier seat of woven rush, splint or rope. Traces of orange-colored stain remain on parts of its pine frame. The chair was found in Leeds County, in eastern Ontario, not far from the Quebec border.
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5. Armchair Ontario or Quebec c. 1790-182^ H. 36" W. 27^" B. HI” Courtesy Canadians Department, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.
This armchair, with slip seat upholstered in modern red velvet, combines elements of Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite design with native Canadian features such as maple wood and simple out ward curving arm supports pegged to the side seat ra ils with two large wooden pegs in a manner seen often in Quebec. While found in Ontario, this chair may be of Quebec manufacture.
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6. Armchair Ontario or Quebec c. 1790-1825 H. 36" W. 21 7/8" D. 17-r" Canadiana Department, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.
This armchair, while containing many elements similar to those of the chair shown in illustration 5? reflects the work of a skilled craftsman more at ease with English design and construction. Like the preceding chair, it is of maple. Its slip seat has been replaced, however, by a modern uphols tered spring seat.
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7. Side chair- Ontario First auarter, 19th century H. 32-" W. 17" D. lh" York Pioneer and Historical Society, Sharon Temple Museum, Sharon, Ontario.
This chair, with its simply turned stiles, legs and stretchers and back composed of tapering spindles and shaped crest and stay rail, if placed in a stylistic category, would be said to show Sheraton influence. Its seat, probably original, is of the woven inner bark of the ash or elm tree. I ts upper front stretcher shows the wear of many restless feet. Its present finish, light brown paint, is not original.
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8. Armchair ( l of a pair) Thomas W. Colleton (1798-1855) Vernonville, Peterborough County, Ontario c. 18U5 H. 50” W. 25-i" D. 2?i" Centennial Museum, Peterborough, Ontario.
Tradition has it that this and another similar maple armchair (illu s . 10) were made about 13U5 by Thomas W. Colleton, second son of Sir James Nassau Colleton, a Captain in His Majesty's 23rd Regiment and a veteran of Waterloo.8 Combining Regency and Empire motifs, such as lio n 's mask arm terminals and raw feet, with vaguely Chippendalean outlining of the front and side seat ra ils , Colleton created a unique masterpiece of Canadian pro vincial design. The upholstery is modern.
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9. Armchair shown in illu stra tio n 8 without upholstered back.
Perhaps the most unique feature of both Thomas W. Colleton‘s armchairs is that their upholstered back were made to be easily removable.
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g P ^ .v .S I® ® !
,10. Armchair (l of a pair) Thomas W. Colleton (1798-1855) Vernonville,-Peterborough County, Ontario c. I8li5 H. 51" W. 27" D. 22i" Centennial Museum, Peterborough, Ontario.
This unusual maple armchair is one of a pair with that shown in illustration 8 . The casters on both, but more clearly visible here, appear to be original.
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11. Armchair shown in illu s tra tio n 10 without upholstered back.
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12. Ladderback side chair Henry Walrath (w. circa 18U2-1860) Richmond Township, Lennox and Addington County, Ontario H. ySl-” W. 18£" D. 13i" Mrs. George Brooks, R.R. 3, Roblin, Ontario.
This chair, which has descended in the family of its maker, Henry Walrath, shows the work of the semi-professional chair- maker who farmed during the summer months and spent his winter hours as a woodworker. I t is believed to have had originally a woven splint seat of slippery elm which grew near the Walrath farm. While the chair is now greatly weathered, traces remain of two coats of blue and one coat of dark red paint. Walrath made, in addition to chairs, other simple pieces of household furniture. A painted desk and cradle made by him are owned by a descendant, Mrs. George Brooks of R.R. 3, Roblin, to th is day.
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13. Arrowback side chair. Henry Walrath (w. circa I8h2-l860) Richmond Township, Lennox and Addington County, Ontario H. 36|" W. 18|" D.-134" Mrs. George Brooks, R.R. 3, Roblin, Ontario.
Also the work of Henry Walrath, this chair is of the popular arrowback type, a chair of Windsor construction with "arrows" inspired, probably, by neoclassical motifs of the late eighteenth century. Its present coat of red paint conceals earlier black paint and simple stenciling on the crest rail.
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ALEXANDER DRUMMOND, [Formerly of I widen Liverpool ,] SIGN, FANCY, & ORNAMEN- ^ TAL PAINTER, Tr King Street, next door to R. A. Purkcr * ESPECTl'ULL’v informs tlie public, that lie continues to jgfjl carry on the painting business iti all its branches; and will fulfil or- l£==£==~~ ders in his line, with the utmost punctuality and despatch. Cabinet-Furniture finished, in imitation of Wood and Stone; Oil Cloths and Floor Carpets, Steam Boat Cabins, Public Halls, &cM elegantly painted, to order. _ Fancy and Windsor /Chairs painted, bronzed, and gilt.— Fancy pieces, done on glass, silk, or velvet. Transparent Window Curtains * Labeling, and Enamelling. Imitations of Mahogany, Oak, Maple, Walnut, Marble, Freeston*, &c. On sale, an assortment of Fancy and Windsor Chairs. Nov. 17. 87z.
lh. Advertisement of Alexander Drummond, Upper Canada Gazette, Dec. 10, 1829. ““ Courtesy Public Archives of Ontario, Toronto.
Alexander Drummond of York was one of relatively few pro fessional painters who advertised in Upper Canada. His adver tisement suggests the wide variety of work he was willing to do and indicates that he sold, as well as painted, Fancy and Windsor chairs. ■ The chair illustrated, of mixed Sheraton and Empire design, is a standard typesetter’s cut, not an illustration of a chair actually sold or painted by Mr. Drummond.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1!?. Fancy side chair United States, oossibly New York c. 1810-1830 Illu stra tio n from Jeanne Minhinnick, At Horne in Upper Canada (Toronto and Vancouver, 1970), p. 188.
Fancy chairs f ir s t were advertised in Upper Canada by Chester Hatch of Kingston In 181!?.“ Two years la te r, Hatch offered "Elegant Broad top ball back" chairs 5 probably similar in appea rance to this chair, one of a set of six ov;ned by an old Kingston family. Chairs which are nearly identical, except in terms of their painted decoration, may be found in the Peabody Museum, Salem, and at the Henry Francis duPont Winterthur Museum.
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1 6. "Bamboo" side chair Probably Ontario c. 1810-1830 H. 33" W. 17" D. Ihy" Mrs. W. 0. McIntyre, Aurora, Ontario.
This chair has descended in an old York County family and is identical to other "bamboo" chairs found in the Markham and Niagara areas. The carefully articulated turnings of the stiles, legs and spindles ‘were intended to suggest real bamboo. While actually of birch or other native woods, they retain here their original dark brown stain highlighted by gold naint. The seat of this chair wa ^..originally of rush.. Early in this century it was covered with needlepoint and stuffed with human hair. The Toronto firm of Smith and Lawrence sold "bamboo" chairs, among other types, and oDerated a wareroom near Aurora in 1828.°
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17. "Waterloo" side chair Possibly Ontario c. 1818-1828 H. 31?" W. 18" D. 16" Courtesy Canadiana Department, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.
This chair, inspired by the ancient Greek klismos form pro bably is similar to what Chester Hatch of Kingston called "Waterloo" chairs in 1817,^ "Waterloo" then being a term used to describe a sabre-shaped leg.® With its cane seat and brass mounts set against a mahogany frame stained black to suggest ebony, this chair once was owned by the proud Sir Peregrine Maitland, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada from 1818 to 1828.9
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115
18. Side chair (1 of a set of 6 ) Ontario c. 1830-1850 H. 3h" Courtesy Canadians Department, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.
This type of chair, used frequently in- the dining room, is a step away from the "Waterloo" or klismos form. While retaining an outward curving rear leg, it has front legs turned in the manner of many English chairs of the period according to the formula pictured in J. C. Loudon's popular Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture (London, 1833), figs. I89l::l593. The chair is made of figured birch and has a slip seat covered with modern haircloth.
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19. Fancy side chair Ontario or northern United States c. 1830-1850 H. 3 l|" W. 17" D. Ihi" York Pioneer and Historical Society, Sharon Temple Museum, Sharon, Ontario.
This side chair with a history of ownership in the Millard family, early settlers in Newmarket, retains its original rush seat, painted graining and gold stenciling. A. chair which could easily have been shinned in parts, it may have come from an Upper Canadian or a United States workshop.
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20. Fancy ("Pillowback") side chair Ontario or northern United States c. 1830- 18^0 H. 39' W. 17$" D. I5v" Kiss Nora H illary, Aurora, Ontario.
This chair, while of the "pillowback" type commonly found in the United States and Canada, has unusual trumpet-and-ball turned front legs which would seem more at home in furniture of the late seventeenth century. The name "pillowback," a modern term, comes from the shape of the central portion of this chair's turned crest rail. Similar turnings were found on the crest rails of some Regency- and Empire-style chairs but were popularized by American firms such as that of Lambert Hitchcock in Connecticut. Traces of dark green paint on one leg of this chair below the seat may indicate its original color before refinishing. Stenciled decoration once adorned its wide back r a il. Its early rush seat is painted black.
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 1 8
21. Side chair Ontario or northern United States c. 1830-1850 H. 36" W. l 6f" D. I6i 11 Wellington Community Museum, Prince Edward County, Ontario.
Similar to the "pillowback" type of side chair, this example retains its original painted graining and striping composed of thin, yellow lines scarcely visible in the photograph. This chair is said to have belonged to a Quaker family in Bloomfield, Prince Edward County, in the I8h0's.
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22. Slat-and-spindle-back side chair (l of a set of h) Richard Dynes (1839-1890) Tullamore, Peel County, Ontario c. 1860-1870 H. 32?" W. 15 3/8" D. lh 3/8" Peel County Museum and Art Gallery, Brampton, Ontario.
The bottom of th is plank-seated chair of Windsor construction bears the inscription, stenciled in red and black, "R. Dynes / Chair and Cabinet / Maker / Tullamore P. 0. / Canada West." Dynes is thought to have begun working in Tullamore as a young man. He continued there until at least as late as 187b. ^ Now stripped to the bare wood, this chair bears traces of an early coat of yellow and cream-colored paint.
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1 2 0
23. Workshop of Richard Dyr.es, cabinet- and chairmaker, Tullamore, July, 1971*.
This building is traditionally believed to have been the . ■workshop of Richard Dynes where the chair shown in illu stra tio n 22 was made. In its heyday i t was probably typical of a medium-sized shop of an independent cabinet- and chairmaker. Tullamore, where this building is located, was described even in the early 1850 's as "a miserable, tumble-down, dilapidated looking place" containing only about 100 inhabitants.
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2i*. Arrowback armchair Peterborough County, Ontario c. 1830-1850 Mrs. Janet Ehnes, Balieboro, Ontario
This simple arrowback armchair is believed to have been made fpr its present owner's great-grandfather by a local, Peterborough County maker. It well represents the work of an independent rural chairmaker using native pine, maple and oak. The front left leg and front and left stretchers have been replaced.
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25. Arrowback rocking chair Ontario c. 1830-1850 H. 351" W, 16-J-" D. lU 3A" York Pioneer and Historical Society, Sharon Temple Museum, Sharon, Ontario.
Like so many Ontario chairs, this handsome rocker, made of maple and pine, has been stripped to produce an effect which probably would not have pleased its nineteenth-century owners. Traces of dark-colored stain remain to suggest its original finish.
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llllS i
26. Arrowback aide chair Colonel E. Buell Cabinet and Chair Factory Brockville, Ontario l8Ul-c.i860 H. 33 7/ 8” W. 13 3 A" D. 1$ " Upper Canada Village, Morrisburg, Ontario.
The paper label attached to the seat bottom of this chair reads "COL. E. BUELL / CABINET & CHAIR / FACTORY. ALL WORK WARRANTED / BROCKVILLE, C.W.” The Buell family name is an old one in Brockville: William Buell (1751-1832), a Loyalist and veteran of the Revolutionary War, founded the t o w n . But re search has yet to be done on Colonel E. Buell's cabinet and chair factory. That th is chair must date from I 8I4I or later is indicated by the use of ”C. W." on its paper label. Upper Canada officially became Canada West, for which ”C. W." is an abbreviation, in 161*1. An early coat of dark red paint, possibly the original finish of this chair, is now covered with gray.
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27. Rod-back Windsor side chair Eleazar Lewis Newmarket, Ontario c. 1831 H. 22b" W. Hi" D. 1)4" York Pioneer and Historical Society, Sharon Temple Museum, Sharon, Ontario.
This chair was made for U3e in Sharon Temple, an elaborate three-story structure erected in Sharon by the Children of Peace between the year 1825 and 1832.-^ In the early 1830's, the traveler, Patrick Shirreff, wrote of the Temple, "the interior was filled with wooden chairs."^ Each of the chairs bore the name, written under the seat, of the member of the congregation who sat on i t . This one was used by Rachel Lundy. The Temple chairs can be attributed to the nearby Newmarket maker, Eleazar Lewis, since they are identical to a chair bearing his branded mark and owned by a Lewis descendant. This example retains its original finish, yellow paint relieved by dark green strip in g .
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28. Rod-back Windsor side chair A. B. Ramer Markham, Ontario c. 1850 H. 30" W. 12 3/b" D. 13" Mr. and Mrs. FVank Barkey, R.R. 3» Claremont, Ontario.
This simple chair of pine and maple, with modest bamboo turnings on its legs and back posts, bears the stenciled mark "A B RAMER / MARKHAM / 1850" under the seat. The chair has been stripped and its four stretchers replaced.
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29. Stenciled mark of A. B. Ramer, Markham, appearing on under side of seat of chair shown in illustration 28.
While the year l 8£0 is included in Ramer's mark, the chair shown in illustration 28 may be of a slightly ,later date. 18^0 may have been the year Mr. Ramer began his business. On July 31, 1856, Ramer advertised in The Markham Economist that he was a cabinetmaker, upholsterer and operator of a furni ture wareroom one mile north of the village of Markham. He is said to have died in the year 1896.17
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127
30. Rod-back Windsor side chair S. Haskin Lyn, Leeds County, Ontario c. 1850 H. 3 l|" W. 13 5/8" D. 15" Upper Canada Village, Morrisburg, Ontario.
Now painted yellow over an original coat of dark red, this chair bears the impressed mark of S. Haskin, a Leeds County chairmaker who worked in the village of Lyn about the middle of the nineteenth century. Its scroll-shaped seat, reminiscent of a Boston Rocker seat, and the curving upper edge of its crest rail set this simple chair apart from other rod-back Windsors of its time.
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31. Rod-back Windsor side chair W. D. and L. L. Brooks Mille Roches, Ontario I81il-c.l870 H. 23" W. 1U 1/8" D. 1Jj£" Upper Canada Village, Morrisburg, Ontario.
This simple rod-back Windsor chair bears the stenciled mark of W. D. and L. L. Brooks of Mille Roches under i t s painted seat. The use of the abbreviation "C. W." on the stencil indicates that it was made during or after the year l 8Ul, although the precise working dates of the Brooks firm are not yet known. In the early iBSiO’s, one J. or I . Brooks is known to have been operating a chair factory in Mille Roches,^ a village now submerged by the expansion of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The present paint colors, dark red with yellow striping, are a conjectural restoration.
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agNHBfc
32. Stenciled mark, "FROM / W. D. & L. L. BROOK /~S_7 / MILLE ROCHE /TS 7 / C. W.," on underside of seat of chair shown in illustration 31.
Like the bottoms of so many plank-seated chairs, this one shows signs of having been used to strike wooden matches.
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33. Commode armchair W. D. and L. L. Brooks, Mille Roches, Ontario 18U1-C.1B70 H. U6" W. • 19 v" D. 18 i" Upper Canada Village, Morrisburg, Ontario.
Like the preceding chair, this one is marked by W. D. and L. L. Brooks of Mille Roches under the seat. It is a commode chair and has a covered hole in the seat to receive a ceramic or metal pot. Over painted graining are traces of gold stenciling on the crest rail and seat front.
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3h. Rocking chair Ontario c. 1830-1860 H. 33 3A" W. 18" D. 1?1" Courtesy Canadians Department, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.
This pine rocker bears an early coat of red and black paint. Black has been used to highlight its four ball-turned back spindles, while red lends a colorful appearance to the rest of the chair. The curved outline of its broad crest ra il and its sweeping back supports associate this chair with Empire designs, while its turned spindles bring to mind "Elizabethan" styles of mid-century. Yet the overall effect is the product of its maker's own ingenuity and owes little to academic ta stes.
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35- Low-back "bar-room" Windsor armchair W. H. Woodall Hagerman's Corners, Markham Township, Ontario c. i860 H. 28i" W. 19" D. 1? 3/h" Mr. John W. Lunau, Markham, Ontario,
This may be one of the few so-called "bar-room Windsors" actually used in a bar room. Its present owner acquired it from the Beehive Hotel in Hagerman's Corners, not far from where i t was made. On the underside of the seat is the stamp of its maker, W. H. Woodall. Woodall is known to have been in the area of Hagerman's Corners at le a st as early as 18I|6 and to have been working there until 1866 or later.2° Made, in part, of pine, this chair has now been stripped but may have been grained and stenciled in the manner of another labeled Woodall ch air.21
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36. Low-back Windsor armchair (l of a set of l l ) Possibly David or William Hogg Lanark County, probably Perth, Ontario c. 1863 H. 30-1" W. 18 3/h" D. 181" Perth Museum, Matheson House, Perth, Ontario.
This chair is one of a set of eleven made for the Perth Town Hall, b u ilt in 1863. I t is very sim ilar to other low-back Windsors found in Lanark County, of which Perth is the county seat, and may be the work o.f David or William Hogg, prominent woodworkers in Perth during the 1850*3 and '60's.^^ Its present finish is a coat of brown paint.
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37. Altered low-back Windsor armchair Possibly David or William Hogg Lanark County, probably Perth, Ontario c. i860 H. Ul|" W. 19 3/li" D. 18>-" Mrs. Janet Ehnes, Balieboro, Ontario.
This chair is an altered version of the low-back Windsor shown in illu s tra tio n 36. To a typical Lanark County armchair have been added rockers, an extension to the front edge of the seat to give it a rolled effect in the manner of a Boston Rocker, and a head re st of Empire derivation.
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38. Empire or "Grecian" side chair Ontario or northern United States c. 18U0-1870 H. 33" W. 17i" D. 1?^" Lennox and Addington H istorical Society, Allan Macpherson House, Napanee, Ontario.
The vase-shaped back splat, broad crest rail with semi circular cutouts and outward curving legs are stock features of North American Empire-style side chairs which came in the wake of earlier klismos or "Waterloo" styles. The chair shown here is probably of the type widely called "Grecian" and sold in Ontario at least as early as 18U3 . ^ Its carved crest rail is identical to that of chairs made in the United States and may have been importedIt is similar to the crest rail used on a chair bearing the label of Abram Southard of Picton^? who is known to have purchased furniture and chair parts from John Gibbard and Son of Napanee, where th is chair came from.2° The chair is of walnut with a slip seat covered in modern fab ric.
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39. Empire or "Grecian" side chair Possibly Toronto, Ontario c. 18U0-1870 H. 331" W. 17" D. 16*" Miss Nora H illary, Aurora, Ontario.
This chair too i 3 of the "Grecian" type. Its front legs, however, like those of the chair shown in the preceding illu s tration, are of a simplified cabriole form and suggest the rising popularity of Rococo Revival styles of the mid-nineteenth century. This chair is made of walnut with mahogany veneer and has a slip seat upholstered in modern fabric. It has descended in an old York County family and may possibly be of Toronto origin.
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UO. Side chair S. Haskin, Lyn, Leeds County, Ontario c. 1850 H. 33" W. 13 5/8" D. 15" Upper Canada Village, Morrisburg, Ontario.
This side chair of Windsor construction is sim ilar to the chair 3hown in the preceding illustration only in terms of the general shape of its crest r a il, which is very sim ilar to that of the Ha3kin chair shown in illustration 30. The scroll-shaped seats, the posts, stretchers and legs of both Haskin chairs are identical. Here, however, a wavy-edged back splat has been used to create a chair of unusual, vigorous design. It retains its original graining, striping and painted leaf decoration on its front legs. "S. HASKIN" is branded on the underside of the seat.
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ill. Side chair Possibly Napanee, Ontario c. 18U0-1870 H. 32” W. 17z" D. l & ” Lerrnox and Addington H istorical Society, Allan Macpherson House, Napanee, Ontario.
This chair is part of a set used in the Lennox and Addington Court House, erected in Naoanee in the i860*s. ' I t retains early haircloth upholstery on its slip seat. Stylistically, it displays many features frequently seen in North American Empire-style side chairs, yet strikes a note of virtuosity in the unusual cutout shapes of it3 back splat. The chair is made of walnut.
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U2. "Balloon” or "Half French" side chair Possibly Toronto, Ontario c. 18U0-1890 H. 33” W. 17" D. lb*" Miss Nora H illary, Aurora, Ontario.
From the seat down, this chair resembles closely the Empire- style side chair shown in illustration 39. Yet its back is of the "balloon" shape associated with mid-.nineteenth century Rococo Revival styles. The term "Balloon chairs" was in use in Ontario at least as early as 18h 3 .^ By having upholstery on the seat alone, instead of on the seat and back, it could also have been described as a "Half French Chair," another term in use by 18U3.-^ This chair is of walnut with modern upholstery over its slip seat.
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^ .- ’V • . < r\ ; . ? » s r -r '
»S -i 1 • '<■ ' :*-V* J- - ■) ; ’ ' .’ •«••_,•• • •■■»*? ..£ • • 'l i § k
O’NEILL BROTHERS,) •Auctioneers, Commission •Agents, «w«f G en eral CABINET MANUFACTURERS, TN referring 10 ihe Change recently made in the late Firm of P. J. and P. O’NEILL, would respectfully leader their grateful Acknowledgments for the extensive I Support bellowed upoa Iboi Eitobliibroent for the past Seven Years; which, from the increased Facilities in the bonds of the preient Proprietors, arising from thoir decidedly favourable silua* tion, exionsivs and commodious Premiiei, with other Advantages, they confidently trust they may be permitted to hope for a continuance of. Liberal Advances made on every Description o f Goods consigned for immediate Sale. 2Vic most extensive and varied Assortment o f FURNITURE To b . foind In »nr Stor. in this City, embracing almott erarjr Article in Honaa Forniatiing, including BEDDING, STOVES, DEI.PH, Ac., will bs found at tho COMMERCIAL SALE ROOMS, adjoining the Englith Church. An Aatorlmcnt of D R V G O O D S conalanlly cn Hand. NjB. OUT-AUCTlONS and VALUATIONS, both in Tow. and Conniry, at. tondad to— Toronto, 30th April, 1844. 3114. ,--4 -1. 1— ^ ------111 [.m - "
ti^. Advertisement of O'Neill Brothers, Auctioneers, Commission Agents and General Cabinet Manufacturersj from The Examiner (Toronto), May 22, I 8I1U. Courtesy Public Archives of Ontario, Toronto. Besides being cabinetmakers, the O'Neills sold dry goods, household furnishings in wide variety and items consigned to them by small-scale furniture shoos. Notices of their auction sales appeared regularly in Toronto papers. Their building was located on King Street, next to St. James Cathedral.
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hh* Cane-seated side chair Charles Robinson and Company (182^-1878) Rochester, New York c. 18UO-1860 H. 33?” W. 17" D. 16" Upper Canada Village, Korrisburg, Ontario.
Marked Robinson chairs have been found in large numbers in southern Ontario and remind us of early trade across the Great Lakes of factory-made furniture. This chair is distinguished by its lyre-shaped back splat of Empire derivation. It retains its original black graining over dark red paint, probably in tended to suggest rosewood. I ts cane seat is old and may have been woven by boys at Rochester's Western House of Refuge with which Robinson had a contract.^l
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Cane-seated side chair Charles Robinson and Company (1825-1878) Rochester, New York c. I 8I1O-I86O H. 3 I 2" W. 17" D. 16" Mrs. Janet Ehnes, Balieboro, Ontario.
Another marked Robinson chair, this one has a two-slat back and sawn, rather than turned, front legs and stretcher. I t is of mixed woods and has replaced caning.
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U6 . Cane-seated side chair (l of a pair) Charles Robinson and Company (l82$-l878) Rochester, New York c. 18U0-1860 H. 33i" V/. 1?” D. 16" Barnum House Museum, Grafton, Ontario.
This Robinson chair retains its original painted graining over mixed woods although its cane seat has been replaced. While at first glance this chair seems quite different from that 3hown in illustration bii, its legs, stiles, stretchers and seat are identical. Then as now, factory production depended largely on interchangeable parts with enough possible variations to suit individual tastes.
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U7. Rocking chair Charles Robinson and Company (1825-1878) Rochester, New York c. 18U0-1860 H. hlf" W. 20f" D. 19 3A " Mr. and Mrs. Norman Jolly, Aurora, Ontario.
I ts graceful curves and simple lines mark this Robinson chair as an outstanding example of well designed factory- produced furniture of the mid-nineteenth century. Made largely of walnut, it retains early, and very comfortable, caning on its seat and back.
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L18. Impressed mark, "C. ROBINSON, / MAKER, ROCHESTER, N.Y."
Robinson's mark is usually found on the back of the crest rail of his chairs. This one appears on the chair shown in illustration Ii6 .
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h9. Cane-seated side chair Ontario or northern United States c. 18UO-1860 H. 3h" W. 17" D. 16" Prince Edward County Museum, Picton, Ontario.
This chair, of maple with a curly maple crest rail, is similar to the Robinson chair shown in illu stra tio n I16, yet its turnings are more vigorous and it seems never to have had a dark stain or painted graining. I t has, however, been given a new cane seat. Mails and metal braces have been added for support where the seat frame meets the rear legs.
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50. Cane-seated side chair Possibly Sayres Hagar Willowbank, Ontario c. 18U0-1860 H. 31" W. 17" D. l$i" Courtesy Canadians Department, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.
While the narrow crest ra il and two narrow stay ra ils of this chair are reminiscent of Sheraton features, its front legs and f la t front stretcher, shaped s tile s and cane seat resemble strongly the work of mid-nineteenth-century chair factories. Yet the wood used is solid mahogany. I ts maker is said to have been Sayres Hagar, in whose family the chair descended.
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?1. Cane-seated side chair Heywood Chair Manufacturing Company Gardner, Massachusetts c. 18?0-1900 H. 29?" W. 17" D. 16" Mr. John W. Lunau, Markham, Ontario.
This chair may have been part of a commercial shipment of chairs to Ontario from the United States or it may have come into the province as part of an immigrant's personal effects. Whatever its background, i t has a long history of ownership in an old Markham family. Similar chairs were offered by the Heywood company as late as 189?. They could be had in "antique maple" or "imitation walnut" finish . ^ This example appears to retain its original seat and dark finish. It is marked with imoressed letters "HEIWOOD CHAIR MANI£ Co. / GARDNER. MASS. U. S. A." under the forerail of the seat.
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$2. Cane-seated side chair G. P. Walter and Company Bowmanville, Ontario 1861-1866 H. 29?" W. 17" D. 16" Bowmanville Museum, Bowmanville, Ontario.
This marked G. P. Walter chair is identical in every respect to the marked Heywood chair shown in the preceding illustration. Either one firm was copying the other or both were copying someone else. Or perhaps one of the two firms bought parts from the other or both bought from a third party and then sold the chairsas their own. A label or mark alone does not provide all the clues about a chair's origin and history.
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53. Cane-seated side chair G. P, Walter and Company Bowmanville, Ontario 1861-1866 H. 33t" W. 17" D* l6 " Bowmanville Museum, Bowmanville, Ontario.
The stiles, legs, stretchers and seat of this chair are identical to those shown in the preceding illustration. A line drawing of this popular type of G. P. Walter chair appeared in The Canadian Illu strate d News in 1863. In the a rtic le which accompanied i t , the G. P. Walter firm claimed to make a greater variety of cane-seated chairs than were made anywhere else in Canada and to be able to compete with United States prices.33 In *1873, Hopkins and Coolidge, Boston wholesale furniture dealers, were selling an identical chair called a "Null Spindle Grecian," for $9.50 per dozen.3U By this time, the term "Grecian" was used to refer to a wide variety of common chairs.
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5U. Rocking chair G. P. Walter and Company Bowmanville, Ontario 1861-1866 H. U3^' W. 22^" D. 20^" Bowmanville Museum, Bowmanville, Ontario.
This chair too is similar to United States models of approxi mately the same date. Hopkins and Coolidge called this chair a "Null Rocking" chair and sold it for $27.00 per dozen in maple, $28.00 per dozen in oak and $U0.00 per dozen.in walnut. They shipped th eir chairs from Boston in "knock down" or "shooked" condition — that is, in pieces — and left them unfinished, or "in the white."35 Canadian suppliers probably did much the same thing, although none of th eir catalogs or trade lite ra tu re have come to light.
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55. Nurse rocking chair G. P, Walter and Company Bowmanville, Ontario 1861-1866 H. 36" W. 17" D. 16" Bowmanville Museum, Bowmanville, Ontario.
The nursing rocker, or "nurse rocker" as it was more commonly called in the nineteenth century, was rather low to allow a nursing mother to control easily the motion of the chair with her legs and feet. It was made without arms to facilitate movement while she was handling a baby. With its pierced and carved crest rail, this type of chair was sold by Hopkins and Coolidge for $19.00 a dozen as a "Rose-carved Nurse."36
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission 56. Impressed mark, "G. P. WALTER St CO / BOWMANVILLE, C.W.," from the back of the crest rail of the chair shown in illustration 53.
According to The Canadian Illustrated News in 1863, all chairs made by the G. P. Walter Company were marked before leaving the factory.37 The mark on Walter chairs shown in illustrations 53, 5U and 55 is found on the backs of their crest rails, while that on the Walter chair shown in illustration 52 is found on the under side of its rear seat rail.
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57. Hall chair (1 of a set of U) G. P. Walter and Company Bowmanville, Ontario 1861-1866 H. hi 5/8" W. 21" D. 19" Ontario Ladies College, Whitby, Ontario.
This hall chair is part of the original furnishings of Whitby's Gothic Revival "Trafalgar Castle" designed by Joseph Sheard and b u ilt fo r Nelson G ilbert Reynolds in 1859. The G. P. Walter firm is known to have made a large quantity of its furniture.™ Like other "high style" Walter pieces made on special commission and not as part of the factory's regular production, this chair is not marked with the company's name. Three other, identical chairs exist in the Castle today along with two benches with similar finials and applied carvings on their high backs. Made of oak, like most other hall furniture of its time, this chair has lost the turned cap of its central finial.
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58. Applied carving of 8 recumbent stag over a shell and foliage from back of chair shown in illustration 57. The stag’s antlers are missing.
This carving may have been inspired by the "stag lodged" on the Reynolds family crest over the front doors of Trafalgar Castle. It also could have been purchased, however, from a large-scale producer of carved ornament such as the firm of H. Roda across Lake Ontario in Rochester. Roda, who had agents in major United States cities and in Toronto and Montreal, sold "Solid Wood Furniture Carvings, Carved Heads, Carved Drawer Handles" and a host of other ornaments.39
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5>9. Hall chair (1 of a pair) G. P. Walter and Company Bowmanville, Ontario 1861-1866 H. 3U" W. 15?" D. Hit." Ontario Ladies College, Whitby, Ontario.
Also from Trafalgar Castle, which became the home of the Ontario Ladies College in 187b, th is oak h all chair may have been inspired by designs for hall chairs shown in Blackie and Son’s The Victorian Cabinet-Maker's Assistant, a highly success ful British copybook first published in 1853.^ The carved oak shield on the back of this chair is applied. The chair's left pendant drop is missing.
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60. Hall chair (l of a pair) G. P. Walter and Company Bowmanville, Ontario 1861-1866 H. 35 3/U" W. 151" D. lhl" Ontario Ladies College, vi/hitby, Ontario.
From the seat down, this oak hall chair is identical to that shown in the preceding illustration. It too may owe something to The Victorian Cabinet-Maker*s Assistant for the design of its back.
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61. Engraving of the Bowmanville Cabinet Factory and G. P. Walter and Company building3, Bowmanville, Ontario, c. 1863. Originally appearing in The Canadian Illustrated News, it is reproduced from Jeanne Minhinnick, At Home in Upper Canada (Toronto and Vancouver, 1970), p. 195.
Note the horse-drawn wagon loaded with chairs, the empty wagon waiting to be loaded and the bedsteads, tables and chairs standing on the platform in front of the buildings. According to an accom panying description of the factory in The Canadian Illustrated News, G. P. Walter and Company's cane-seated chairs were made on the third floor of the building at the extreme left and painted and finished in the two-story building beside it.
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62. Slat-and-spindle-back side chair Bowmanville Furniture Manufacturing Company Bowmanville, Ontario 1867-C.1890 H. 31" W. 13 5/8" D. it, 7/8" Bowmanville Museum, Bowmanville, Ontario.
This chair is stamped on the underside of its seat by the Bowmanville Furniture Manufacturing Company, successors to G. P. Walter and Company, who operated from 1867 «to about -1893-.- i t is of a type commonly called a "chicken coop chair" by Ontario dealers and collectors but which might more correctly be known as a slat-and-spindle-back chair. Jacques and Hay of Toronto and New Lowell seem to have called this style of chair a "cottage chair,"^2 although the concept of cottage furniture in the second half of the nineteenth century was broad and included several simple styles of household furnishings.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 63. Stamped mark, ’’From the / BOWMANVILLE / FURNITURE ^"E J / MANUFACTURING / Company," from the underside of the seat of the chair shown in the preceding illustration.
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6h. Envelope postmarked May 12, /fl8_77!?, from the Bowmanville Furniture Manufacturing Company showing a heavily upholstered Renaissance Revival side chair of a type presumably made or sold by the Bowmanville firm. In the collection of the Bowmanville Museum, Bowmanville, Ontario.
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65. Easy (or Gentleman's) chair Possibly Toronto, Ontario c. 1850-1890 H. U0£" W. 2hi" D. 2h" Miss Nora Hillary, Aurora, Ontario.
Now known as a "gentleman's chair," this piece was called an "easy chair" when it was sold, separately or in a "parlor suit," during the second half of the nineteenth century.h3 This is a very simple example, made of walnut, without the elaborately carved crest r a il, knees and fore r a il found on more expensive chairs of this type. Its curving outline is typical of mid-century chairs in the Rococo Revival style. With upholstered back, seat and arms, it may have been known to dealers and customers as a "Full French" chair.hk This chair has descended in an old York County family and may be of Toronto origin. Its present damask upholstery is replaced.
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66. "Balloon" or "Half French" side chair Possibly Toronto, Ontario c. 1850-1890 ' H. 35 3A " W. 19" D. 18" Mrs. W. 0. McIntyre, Aurora, Ontario.
This balloon-back side chair is similar in style to the easy chair shown in the preceding illustration. Because it was uphol stered only on the seat, which now is covered with early twentieth- century needlework, it may have been of the type referred to in advertisements as a "Half French" chair.other contemporary names were "Balloon Chair"^° or, simply, "Parlor Chair."^7 Chairs like this continued to be advertised, often as part of a suite, until late in the century. This examnle is of walnut with an applied crest rail embellished with carved grapes, leaves and nuts. It has descended in an old York County family and may be of Toronto manufacture.
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67. Slat-and-spindle-back side chair (l of a set of 6) John Gibbard Napanee, Ontario c. 18^0-1870 H. 314" W. 15 1/8" D. 15$" The Gibbard Furniture Shops Limited, Napanee, Ontario.
This labeled chair from the shop of John Gibbard is one of a very few pieces which are attributable to this maker who began work in Napanee in 1835 and whose name is commemorated by The Gibbard Furniture Shops of today.^9 It retains its original painted graining, striping and stenciling. Its scroll-shaped seat, similar to a Boston Rocker seat, with a more pronounced curve than that used by chairmaker S. Haskin (illus. 30 and hO), is unusual on this type of chair.
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68. Paper label from underside of seat of chair shown in preceding illustration.
The use of the abbreviation "C.W." means that this label dates between 18U1 and 1867, when Canada West became the Province of Ontario. By 1868, the Gibbard firm had changed its name to John Gibbard and Son.50 The la b e l b rin g s to mind the wide v a rie ty o f work done by many nineteenth-centui’y woodworking establishments -- from making floor boards to arranging funerals and producing fashionable furniture. The upholstered Rococo Revival armchair shown on the Gibbard label is a standard typesetter’s cut.
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69. Cane-seated side chair Possibly Oswego Chair Factory Oswego, New York c .1856-1870 H. 32$*' W. 17" D. 17" Perth Museum, Matheson House, Perth, Ontario.
This chair may be a nineteenth-century import from the Oswego Chair Factory, which is known to have sent large shipments to Canada and to have made round-seated chairs of this type. A drawing of an Oswego Chair Factory chair in a directory of 186U shows a chair identical to the one illustrated here except in its use of one front stretcher instead of two.^1 The chair is of mixed woods, stained dark, with a new cane seat.
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70, Cane-seated "2 Slat" side chair P o ssib ly Jacques and Hay Ontario, possibly Toronto c. 1860-1890 H. 3$" W. 18" D. 17" Mrs. W. 0. McIntyre, Aurora, Ontario.
This is tha most common nineteenth-century chair found in Ontario today. It is of the "2 Slat" type made by Jacques and Hay of Toronto and New Lowell. The measurements of its back slats correspond with those mentioned as being standard for these chairs in the Jacques and Hay correspondence.52 In United States furniture catalogs of the same date, this type o f c h a ir was called "Grecian"53 even though it bore almost no resemblance to earlier "Grecian" types (e.g., illus. 38). This chair, of mixed woods, has been refinished and newly caned.
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71. Cane-seated "gunstock" side chair Possibly Jacques and Hay Ontario, possibly Toronto c. 1860-1890 H. 32i" W. 18" D. 17" York Pioneer and Histroical Society, Sharon Temple Museum, Sharon, O ntario.
The shape of its back posts have earned this chair the name "gunstock chair" among Ontario dealers and collectors. The legs of this chair are nearly identical to those in the ch air shown in illu s tr a tio n 70 and p o ssib ly by Jacques and Hay. While these have only one turned ring below a vase-shaped turning, the legs of the previously illustrated chair have two turned rings in the same position. The front stretchers and the measurements of the seat are, however, identical. This chair retains an early cane seat and a dark stain over mixed woods.
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72. Cane-seated dining chair (l of a set of ii) Possibly Jacques and Hay Ontario, possibly Toronto c. 1860-1890 H. 32 3/h" W. 18" D. 17" Mr. and Mrs. William S. Houstoun, Tullamore, Ontario.
In design, this chair is closely related to that shown in the preceding illustration. Its legs are identical, while its front stretchers and back spindles are nearly so. The outermost spindles of its back continue down to the floor, forming the rear legs of this very pleasing factory-made chair. Chairs of this type were called "dining chairs" or "ladies' dining chairs" in United States catalogs of the second half of the nineteenth century. In the early 1880's, they sold for just over a dollar apiece. This example has been refinished and has a new cane seat.
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73. Office chair Possibly Jacques and Hay Ontario, possibly Toronto c . 1875 H. 32" W. 19" D. 19" Mr. John W, Lunau, Markham, O ntario.
The last of this series of closely related chairs, possibly by Jacques and Hay of Toronto and New Lowell, has legs and stretchers identical to those of the chair shown in illustration 71. Also identical are the unusually closely snaced rear stretchers. This chair is of a Windsor type often called a "captain’s," "fire- house," or "bar-room" chair, but listed in nineteenth-century catalogs as an "office c h a i r . "55 jt is documented as having been part of a set purchased in the 1870's from John Jerman of Markham for the Markham I.O.O.F. Hall. Jarman's stamp, now in the Markham Museum, notes that he served as a local blacksmith, carriage maker, undertaker and furniture d e a l e r . 56 The chair retains an early coat of dark stain over mixed woods.
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7li- Rattan chair with cane seat Possibly the James Hay Company Ontario, possibly Woodstock c. 1880-1900 H. 39?" W. 23 3/h" D. 17?" Oxford Museum, Woodstock, Ontario.
The use of rattan, obtained from a species of climbing palm, reflects the late nineteenth century's interest in novelty and new materials for construction. Its legs and other supporting members are o f iro n . This chair is believed to have been made by the James Hay Company of Woodstock, who also made rattan baby carriages.^' In United States catalogs of the late nineteenth century, similar one-armed rattan chairs were known as "Window Chairs" or "Reception Chairs." They sold for about nine to eleven dollars each.58
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75. Child's rocking chair T. A. S in c la ir M o ttv ille, New York c. 1880-1900 H. 31" W. 16 t" D. 12" York Pioneer and Historical Society, Sharon Temple Museum, Sharon, O ntario.
This chair suggests the late-nineteenth century’s revived interest in simple lines and bamboo-turned furniture inspired, in part, by the Aesthetic Movement in England and a growing general interest in Japanese arts and crafts. I t is stamped on both arms "F. A, SINCLAIR/ MOTTVTLLE, N.Y." and may have been a late-nineteenth-century import. The fabric covering the back and seat of this chair is modern.
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76. Queen Anne Revival side chair Novelty Furniture Company Limited Orangeville, Ontario c. 1890-1920 H. 36 5/8" W. 16 1/8" D. 16" Mrs. W. 0. McIntyre, Aurora, Ontario.
The restrained lines of this chair, reminiscent of eighteenth- century Queen Anne design, reflect conservative tastes at the turn of the century. It is labeled under the seat by the Novelty Furniture Company of Orangeville, a small community northwest of Toronto. Made of mixed woods, it is finished with a dark, reddish stain.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Footnotes
1. Upper Canada Gazette; or, American Oracle, Jan. 23, 1802.
2. See Jean Palardy, The Early Furniture of French Canada, trans. Eric McLean (Toronto, 1963), p i. 5?2.
3. Accessions file, Centennial Museum, Peterborough, Ont.
U. Kingston Gazette, Sept. 19, 1815.
5. I b id ., Nov. 11, 1817.
6. The Loyalist (Toronto), Sept. 13, 1828.
7. Kingston G azette, Nov. 11, 1817.
8. John Gloag, A Short Dictionary of Furniture (New York, 1965), p. UOU.
9. Accessions file , Canadians Department, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.
10. A ccessions f i l e , W ellington Community Museum, W ellington, Ont.
11. Private correspondence with Mr. Elmer C. Dynes of Shelburne, Ont., a grandson of Richard Dynes, Aug. 28, 197U, and Directory of the County of Peel, for 1873-U, comp. John Lynch (Brampton, 187H), p. 126.
12. W. H. Smith Canada: Past, Present and Future (Toronto, 1852), p. 281.
13. Ontario Department of Public Records and Archives, Ontario Historic Sites, Museums and Plaques (Toronto, /1973/). P» 82.
1U. See my book, The Early Writings of David Willson (Toronto, 197U), illus. p, 15.
15. Patrick Shirreff, A Tour Through North America (Edinburgh, 1835), p. 107.
16. For this information I am indebted to Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Lewis, Scarborough, Ont.
17. For this information I am indebted to Mr. John W. Lunau, Curator, Markham D is tr ic t H is to ric a l Museum.
18. Philip Shackleton, The Furniture of Old Ontario (Toronto, 1973), p. 67.
17U
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 7 $ .
19. In W. H. Smith, op. c it., p. 1$1, J. Brooks is noted as. operating a chair factory in Mille Roches. Jeanne Minhinnick, however, lists Israel Brooks as a chairmaker at Mille Roches during the same period in her Furniture Making in Upper Canada, Preliminary Study (178U-1867), TS, Upper Canada Village, Morrisburg, Ont.
20. William Woodall is listed on lot 6 , concession $, Markham Twp. in Extract from Brown * s Directory of Toronto City and Home D istrict for Year 18U6-U7 by George Brown, TS, Markham D is tr ic t H is to ric a l Museum, p. 7. In 18657 William Woodall is noted as a cabinetmaker in Mitchell Co«'3 General Directory for the City of Toronto, and Gazeteer of the Counties of York and Peel, for 1866 (Toronto, 1866), p. U0 8 . I am indebted to Mr. John W. Lunau for bringing these references to my a tte n tio n .
21. See Philip Shackleton, op. cit., illus. 11$. On this chair, Woodall aged a paper label rather than a stamp.
22. David Hogg is noted as working as a cabinetmaker in 18$0, while William Hogg is noted in 186U in Jeanne Minhinnick, Furniture Making. Mrs. Minhinnick also lists W. Russell B artlett, Charles Leach and William Riddle as chairmakers in Lanark County during the mid nineteenth century. A very similar Lanark County chair is shown in Philip Shackleton, op. c it., i l l u s . 1 1 2 .
2 3 . See the advertisement of P. and P. J. O’Neill in The Examiner (Toronto), June lii, 18U3.
2i;. See, for instance, chairs with a Connecticut provenance in the collection of Mrs. S. C. Hamilton, Wilmington, Delaware.
2$. See Jeanne Minhinnick, At Home in Upper Canada (Toronto and Vancouver, 1970), illus. p. 211.
26. John Gibbard and Son, account books, 2 vols., TCRL.
27. For this information I am indebted to the curator, Allan Macpherson House, Napanee.
28. See Joan MacKinnon, Kingston Cabinetmakers Before 1867 (197U), TS, Canadians Department, Royal Ontario Museum, pp. )jl-ij2.
29. See advertisement of P. and P. J. O’Neill, loc. cit.
30. Ib id .
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 176
31. Rochester Historical Society, Genesee County Scrapbook, h (1953), 17-21.
32. Walter Heywood Chair Co., Rattan, Wood, Cane and Upholstered Chairs (New Yorlf, 1895), p. 225.
33. See Jeanne Minhinnick, At Home, p. 195.
3U. Hopkins & Coolidge, Price List and Photographs of Staple Cane and Wood Seat Chairs (Boston, 1873), illus. 39.
35. Ibid., illus. 1.
36. Ibid., illus. 10.
37. See Jeanne Minhinnick, At Home, loc. cit.
38. Ib id .
39. H. Roda, FL Roda 'a Illustrated Catalogue (Rochester, N.Y., /l876]7), title page.
h0. Blackie and Son, The Victorian Cabinet-Maker*s Assistant (l853j rpt. London, 1970), pi. III.
lil. David Morrison et a l., Bowmanville A Retrospect (Bowmanville, 1958), p. 71.
h2. Correspondence, Jacaues and Hay to Robert Paton, Dec. h, 1855 and July 27, 1866, SCA.
h3. See, for instance, Blackie and Son, op. cit., pi. XXVI.
Uh. "Full French" chairs were advertised by P. and P. J. O'Neill in The Examiner (T oronto), June lh , 18U3.
b5. Ib id .
U6. See Joan MacKinnon, lo c . c i t .
U7. F. M. Holmes & Co., Illustrated Catalogue and Price List of Furniture (Boston, 1872). This is the earliest furniture catalog known where photographs are used as illustrations.
h8. Similar chairs appear in Jordan & Moriarty, Illustrated Furniture and Carpet Catalogue (New York, I 8 8 3 ), pp. 22-23.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 177
Ii9. "The Gibbard Furniture Shops Limited: 100 Years, of Excellence," undated article reprinted from Furniture World by The Gibbard Furniture Shops Ltd., Napanee, Ont.
50. Ib id .
51. Directory of the City of Oswego for l86It and 1865, comp. John Fi tz ge rald~T0 swe go, 186b), p. 238.
52. Correspondence, Jacques and Hay to Robert Paton, May b, 1857 and S ept. 9,. 1857, SCA.
53. See, for instance, C. N. Arnold & Co., Illustrated Catalogue of Chairs (Poughkeepsie, N. Y., 1886), p.b.)
5b. Jordan & Moriarty, op. cit., p. 3 and Hopkins & Collidge, op. cit., i l l u s . 22 and 23.
5 5 . Hopkins & Coolidge, op. c it., illus. 108 and 109.
56. I am indebted to Mr. John W. Lunau, Curator, Markham D istrict Historical Museum, for this information.
57. I am indebted to the curator, Oxford Museum, Woodstock, for this information.
58. Walter Heywood Chair Co., op. c it., pp. 8 and 36.
i
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