Fit for Any Society

Fit For Any Society is the first global history of the bentwood chair industry whose products were a vital resource for urban development worldwide in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This unprecedented work demonstrates that Canada was a manufacturing exporter at a larger scale and from an earlier date than is currently recognized, based on a thorough study of Australia as a major market. As the first form of minimal, durable, and resilient mass-seating, bentwood chairs enabled the development of large-scale furniture manufacturing industries and global trade networks. Canada's most ambitious furniture manufacturers, the Hay family of Woodstock and Owen Sound, developed their own branch of the industry from the 1870s onward, exporting over a million chairs to Australasia. Furniture design and manufacturing historian Virginia Wright traces the role of Canadian-manufactured furniture in the rapid growth of cities, towns, and settlements of nineteenth-century North America and Australasia. The book reveals new aspects of Canadian trade, particularly the large-scale trans-shipping of exports through the Ports of Boston, New York–New Jersey, and Liverpool. Fit For Any Society features 146 historic photographs and engravings that chronicle domestic, commercial, and institutional interiors and furnishings in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Ultimately, Wright's findings offer a sweeping, comprehensive view of the history of bentwood furniture and of Canadian manufacturing and trade, at a time when Canada's economic alliances are being reviewed and strengthened.