Mennonite Furniture

Book excerpt: The art, architecture and furniture of Ontario's Mennonite settlers reflected the deep convictions of these law-abiding, profoundly religious and pacifist people. Among the earliest settlers of Ontario's Niagara and York County regions, Mennonites brought to Canada a long rural tradition of building, furniture making and folk art. These ideas inspired the houses and farms they built and the production of a great variety of furniture, and informed the emergence of a style rooted in Germany and Pennsylvania, but clearly modified by the Ontario experience. Mennonite Furniture is a well-illustrated examination of an unmistakeable nineteenth century Ontario style of domestic construction and ornament.